DELCY, CATHERINE [Catarina] [LACY, Catherine Josefa] (b Liverpool, c 1819; d 11 Leighton Grove, St Pancras, London, 15 October 1889)

This chapter presents a biography of mid- to late-19th-century Victorian vocalist Catherine Delcy. The young lady known as 'Miss Delcy' seems to have been the victim of an overweeningly ambitious stage father. His first venture into the field seems to have been on no less a stage than Drury Lane, with a sort of a remake of Rossini's Il Turco in Italia as Turkish Lovers, in which Braham, Fanny Ayton, Horn, Mrs Geesin – and Harley and Miss Kelly in two invented comic characters – took part. 'Miss Delcy' was brought out at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 12 November 1839 in her father's most famous opus, the English Cinderella, in the company of Frazer, Leffler, Morley, Hammond, Misses Betts and Collett, and Mrs Alban Croft. Miss Delcy followed up in Michael Rophino Lacy's versions of Freischütz and Fra Diavolo, and the response seemed positive: 'she has all the requisites by nature to make a fine singer'.