Anna Bishop

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English operatic soprano (1810–1884)

title: "Anna Bishop" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1810-births", "1884-deaths", "19th-century-british-women-opera-singers", "english-operatic-sopranos", "english-people-of-french-descent", "wives-of-knights"] description: "English operatic soprano (1810–1884)" topic_path: "people/1810s" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Bishop" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary English operatic soprano (1810–1884) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]

FieldValue
nameAnna Bishop
imageAnna Bishop 1868 SLNSW FL3312354.jpg
captionBishop in 1868
birth_nameAnn Rivière
birth_date9 January 1810
birth_placeLondon, England
death_date18 March 1884 (aged 74)
death_placeNew York City, U.S.
occupationOperatic soprano
educationRoyal Academy of Music
spouse{{plainlist
children3
::

| name = Anna Bishop | image = Anna Bishop 1868 SLNSW FL3312354.jpg | caption = Bishop in 1868 | birth_name = Ann Rivière | birth_date = 9 January 1810 | birth_place = London, England | death_date = 18 March 1884 (aged 74) | death_place = New York City, U.S. | resting_place = | occupation = Operatic soprano | education = Royal Academy of Music | website = | spouse = {{plainlist|

| children = 3

Anna, Lady Bishop (9 January 181018 March 1884) was an English operatic soprano. She sang in many countries and was believed to be the most widely travelled singer of the 19th century. She was married to the composer Henry Bishop but abandoned him for the French harpist, composer and entrepreneur Nicolas-Charles Bochsa.

Biography

Ann Rivière was born in London, England, daughter of a singing master. Her father was descended from a Huguenot family that had fled to England in the 17th century. She studied piano under Ignaz Moscheles, and then studied voice at the Royal Academy of Music under Henry Bishop. She made her debut at the Ancient Concerts in London in April 1831.{{cite encyclopedia | last1 = Kutsch | first1 = K. J. | authorlink = Karl Josef Kutsch | last2 = Riemens | first2 = Leo | authorlink2 = Leo Riemens | entry-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=dsfq_5dFeL0C&pg=423 | entry = Bishop, Anna | encyclopedia = Großes Sängerlexikon | publisher = De Gruyter | edition = 4th | language = de | date = 2012 | page = 423 | isbn = 978-3-59-844088-5

Bishop sang at the Royal Philharmonic Society and many other venues. Her voice was soprano, said to be of brilliant quality. On 28 March 1834, she was the principal soprano in the first English performance of Cherubini's Requiem in C.

That year she toured the provinces, Scotland and Ireland with the French harpist Nicolas-Charles Bochsa, who had played for Napoleon I; shortly after their return to London, she abandoned her husband and in August took up with Bochsa, who was also 20 years her senior.

Bishop built a reputation as one of the finest operatic sopranos of her day. In New York, she competed with Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti. On 1 November 1852, in New York she sang in the United States premiere of Flotow's Martha.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Anna_Bishop_-CD_Fredericks-_VB_Lawrence_1995_p320.jpg" caption="Bishop, c. 1860"] ::

On 6 January 1856, three weeks after Bishop and Bochsa arrived in Sydney, Australia, and having given only one concert together there, Bochsa died. She buried him at Camperdown Cemetery there, employing a choir and orchestra for the procession and burial, and creating in his honour the most ornate monument in the cemetery, with a statue of herself weeping disconsolately. The mourning figure was later vandalised.

She completed her Australian tour, then returned to South America (Chile, Argentina, Brazil). Her husband was knighted as Sir Henry Bishop, making Anna formally Lady Bishop, despite their estrangement. He died in 1855, having never agreed to a divorce. In 1858, in New York she married Martin Schulz, a diamond merchant. She appeared in England again, the previous scandal having been forgotten; she gave a farewell concert on 17 August 1859. She also gave a royal command performance for Queen Victoria.

She then resumed travelling throughout the Americas. On 4 March 1866 en route from San Francisco to China, on the first leg of a world tour, her ship the Libelle was wrecked on Wake Island, at that time an uncharted coral atoll, and she and Schulz and the rest of her party were stranded there for three weeks. All her costumes, jewellery and music were lost. They finally set out in two rowboats for Guam, a 14-day journey; the boat containing Bishop and her husband made it to safety, but the other boat containing the ship's captain and some crew was lost at sea. After a period of recovery, she resumed her world tour, singing in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Ceylon, New Zealand, and Australia and London once again, before returning to New York. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Anna_Bishop_gravestone_placed_9-22-2025.jpg" caption="After 141 years of going unmarked, Anna Bishop's grave has a monument in St. Paul's Lutheran Cemetery in Red Hook, Dutchess County, NY" alt="A granite gravestone with the text "MADAME ANNA RIVIERE BISHOP SCHULTZ, JAN. 9, 1810, MAR. 18, 1884"] ::

On 14 July 1873, at the personal invitation of Brigham Young, she gave the first concert at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. In 1875, she sang in Australia once more, then in Cape Town and other places in South Africa, on to Madeira and England, and back to New York.

By all accounts she was excellent in her prime but continued to sing well past her prime. Her final concert, at age 73, was a testimonial concert at Steinway Hall in June 1883, where she sang Home! Sweet Home!, the song that had brought fame to her first husband (whose name she still bore).

Anna Bishop Schulz died in New York in March 1884, aged 74, and was buried beside her son Augustus in St Paul's Lutheran Cemetery. The couple had spent what wealth they came into, leaving her grave unmarked for 141 years. On 22 September 2025, a gravestone was placed on her burial site by Historic Red Hook.

Svengali and Trilby

It was popularly believed that George du Maurier later used the hypnotic control Nicolas-Charles Bochsa is said to have had over Bishop as the basis for the characters Svengali and Trilby in his 1894 novel Trilby.

References

References

  1. [http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/21103 picture history] {{webarchive. link. (12 October 2008)
  2. [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1884/03/20/106276793.pdf ''The New York Times'', 20 March 1884]
  3. W.L. Hoffmann, review of Richard Davis, ''Anna Bishop: The Adventures of an Intrepid Prima Donna'', The Canberra Times, 9 August 1997.
  4. [https://books.google.com/books?id=rVLOhGt1BX0C&pg=PA149 ''Notable American Women 1607–1950'']
  5. ''[[Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians]]'', 5th edn, 1954, Vol. I, p. 721.
  6. Wikisource]]
  7. link. (21 October 2012)
  8. Rossini]] and [[Gaetano Donizetti. Mercadante]]'s ''Il Vascello di Gama'', at Naples on 6 March 1845.[http://cdexchang.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/march-18.html Classic Almanac]
  9. [https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bochsa-robert-nicholas-charles-3019 ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'': Bochsa, Robert Nicholas Charles]
  10. John West, ''Theatre in Australia'', p. 37; Cassell Australia, {{ISBN. 0 7269 9266 6.
  11. [http://justinelarbalestier.com/books/magic/excerpts/afterword/ Afterword to the Australian edition of Magic or Madness]
  12. [http://www.janeresture.com/wake/index.htm Welcome to Wake Island]
  13. (27 January 1893). "Anna Bishop's Husband! Idle Old Man Martin Shultz Dies of Typhus Fever.". The New York Times.
  14. "Cemetery Directory".
  15. [https://books.google.com/books?id=y0P_E4drEB8C&pg=PA329 Tales of San Francisco]
  16. [http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=PBH18961028.2.30&dliv=&e=-------10--1----2-- Poverty Bay Herald, 28 October 1896]
  17. [https://archive.today/20120909161453/http://www.quaritch.com/book/651/bochsa-robert-nicholas-charles-nouvelle-methode-de-harpe-en-deux-parties--uvre-60- Bernard Quaritch Ltd]

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1810-births1884-deaths19th-century-british-women-opera-singersenglish-operatic-sopranosenglish-people-of-french-descentwives-of-knights