Lucy Charlotte Benson
Lucy Charlotte Benson was an Australian organist, musician and theatrical entrepreneur. She was a conductor, when all the rest in Tasmania were men.
Life
Benson was born in Hobart in 1860. She was the first child of Fanny was a gifted singer and William Westbrook who was an auctioneer. She had a private education. As a child she was the organist in three and later four different churches.She was the lead in H.M.S. Pinafore, eighteen months after Gilbert and Sullivan first published it. The other actors included her aunt Emily Dobson and William Benson. She was involved in producing most of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. She married William Benson, who also sang, in the Hobart suburb of Bellerive in 1881.
In 1905 she and her choir were given a civic reception in Hobart when they returned from Ballarat having won the championship of the Commonwealth. The choir included eight of her relatives. She had won the gold medal.
In 1926 she directed the comic opera The Toreador or How Sammy Gigg Won the Bullfight. Benson was a leading contributor to nearly every musical occasion in Tasmania for most of her life. She was an accomplished singer who had performed for the Duke and Duchess of York but she was an also a very well regarded teacher of voice production.