Mabel Beddoe

Beddoe, Mabel

Mabel (Beatrice) Beddoe. Contralto, b Hamilton, Ont, 18 Aug 1880, d New York 15 Feb 1959. Her father, Thomas Davis Beddoe (1853-1933), was known as an amateur tenor in Toronto. She studied in Toronto with Edward Schuch, in Boston with Albert Baker Cheney, in Chicago with William Lawrence Tomlins, and in Dresden with Frau Auer-Herbeck. Her career (ca 1910-40) was confined exclusively to concert and oratorio, and her many engagements throughout North America included annual participation for several years in the famous Bach Festivals at Bethlehem, Pa. After a Montreal concert of uncertain date the Star reported: 'Miss Beddoe has a contralto voice of individual timbre, unusual range and richness, and remarkable sonority in the upper register. She uses it with an art that is partly the result of careful training and partly instinctive. She clearly understands what an all-important thing interpretation is'. In 1929 at St Paul's Church, Toronto, she participated in a performance of Bach's Mass in B Minor on the occasion of the dedication of a memorial window to A. S. Vogt.