Content warning: white people
Emma Engdahl-Jägerskiöld
The omlaut-tastic star of the Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian stages opened her own opera company at the tailend of the 1880s. Nowadays, she struggles to keep up with the rigours of the job, because she is dead.
Sir George Power, 7th Baronet
Sir Power, the Kilkenny-born Gilbert & Sullivan star, is the only entry on this list to have been awarded a knighthood. A whole lot of good it did him, seeing as he is dead.
Emma Howson
The Australian soprano is another Gilbert & Sullivan veteran, renowned for creating the principal role of Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore. Like a lot of veterans, she is dead.
Marcella Sembrich
A native of Vyshnivchyk, a tiny village in what is now western Ukraine, the coloratura soprano came from humble beginnings. More recently, she met an even more humble ending. She is dead.
Adolf Kozieradski
We’re not entirely sure if he was big on the opera scene of the 1880s, but we wanted to include him because of his funny name. Whoever heard of a Kozieradski?
This Polish bass-baritone sang the lead in the world premiere of Stanisław Moniuszko’s The Haunted Manor in 1860s Warsaw. Now, the only thing he’s haunting is a cemetery. He is dead.
Lorenz Nikolai Achté
This next entry requires plenty of introduction. Born in Pori, on the west coast of Finland, Achté was one of the first artists attached to the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. His dedication to his homeland is such that he now fertilises some of it. He is dead.
Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Enrapturing audiences professionally since the age of just 15, we’re glad Schumann-Heink, raised in the environs of Bohemia, got started early. She is dead.
Klementina Kalašová
Following her shock eviction from the Big Brother house, the Czech opera singer successfully transitioned into a career as a media personality and pop star one-hit wonder.
That was a bit of levity. She is dead.
Francisco D’Andrade
I wonder if anyone’s made it this far. How much information is buried at the end of listicles? How many acutely personal truths are gathering dust at the bottom of blogposts, met with the same apathy that greeted the 1853 premiere of La traviata?
Anyway, he is dead.
Fyodor Petrovich Komissarzhevsky
Komissarzhevsky is best known for his versatility, proving adept not only as a leading tenor, but also for giving skull-splitting headaches to any critic trying to spell his name. Now comfortably into his twilight years, he divides his time equally between the Protestant Cemetery in Rome and nowhere else. This is because he is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. He is dead.
Featured image: Openclipart
The Toon Lampoon 