LANCIA, Florence [MORRIS, Laura Florence Mary Agnes] (b 12 Walnut Tree Walk, Lambeth, London, 20 March 1840; d 8 Molyneux Park, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, 24 May 1905)

This chapter presents a biography of mid- to late-19th-century vocalist Florence Lancia. Florence Lancia was one of the outstanding English operatic sopranos of the Victorian era, in no way inferior, and in some ways even perhaps superior as a performer, to such major 19th-century stars as Louisa Pyne, Helen Lemmens-Sherrington and Euphrosyne Parepa. Florence was born in Lambeth, London, in 1840, the first daughter of a mathematical instruments-maker of Irish origin named James Morris, and his wife Catherine, nee Sims. She was married to Henry Weller Ladbroke Clarke at St George's Catholic Cathedral, Southwark, on 4 January 1855, at the age of just fourteen. Henry was a grandson of James Weller Ladbroke. Florence's aptitude for music must have shown at a very early age, for in the year after her marriage the fifteen-year-old vocalist and her husband left London for Italy in order to allow her to 'study with the best masters', as the phrase usually went.