ANNA RUSSELL
Anna Russell, born Claudia Anna Russell-Brown in post-Edwardian London, has since her Town Hall debut in 1948 been the foremost satirist of the foibles and excesses of the musical world. Her training in classical music was thorough and conventional, first at the St. Felix School in Suffolk, Then in Brussels, in Paris, and, finally, at the Royal College of Music in London.
She did her first comedy sketch in Toronto, at the invitation of a benefit show director who told her, "You look funny to me." Her act, with words and music written by herself, was so successful that she made a career of comedy. She still writes and arranges her own material for the two hundred or so performances she gives every year in the United States, the British Isles, Europe, and such out-of-the-way places as Hawaii, Tasmania, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In 1955, her book, "The Power of Being a Positive Stinker," was published. As if these activities were not enough for one person, she owns her own music publishing firm.
Recently she returned to opera in the role of the Witch in "Hansel and Gretel" with the New York City Center Opera Company and in the RKO motion picture of the opera. In 1957 she repeated her success in this role with the San Francisco Cosmopolitan Opera Company. During the past summer, she starred in fifty performances of a musical version of Oscar Wilde’s "The Importance of Being Earnest", entitled "Half in Earnest." In June of 1957, also, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Her plans for the future include a series of recitals in 1959 in the South Pacific, en route to Japan, where she is booked for an extensive tour, and to other exotic places in the Far East.