(1853-1907) Composer, music director, pianist.
William Luscombe Searelle (originally Searell) was born in in Kingsteignton, Devonshire, England, but raised in New Zealand from the age of nine. As a child prodigy his piano playing and original compositions also attracted much attention in Sydney. In 1875 his comic opera
The Wreck of the Pinafore was produced in London and two years later he toured his musical comedy
Diamond Cut Diamond throughout Australasia with Hart and Searell's Operetta and Burletta Co. His most successful opera,
Estrella (1883) became a smash hit in Australia when staged by the Montague-Turner Opera Co. in 1884. Others works from this period were
Bobadil (1884) and
Isidora (1885).
After being declared bankrupt in 1886 Searelle moved to South Africa, spending much of the next ten years there. He briefly he returned to New Zealand in 1891 to see his dying father, conducting three acclaimed performances of his cantata 'Australia' with the Christchurch Musical Society. During his South African years he owned a theatre in Johannesburg (which also burned down in 1892) and a coal mine, prospected unsuccessfully for tin in Swaziland and was hounded out of Johannesburg (and South Africa) for refusing to be conscripted into the Boer army. His refusal subsequently led to his financial ruin, once again.
Among his numerous compositions were popular songs such as 'The Bold Gen-d'armes' (1874), 'Love Me' (ca. 1880), 'Broken-Hearted' (1881), 'The Soudan March' (1885), 'The Babies on Our Block' (ca. 1890) and 'When From the Field Returning' (1906). He also wrote a travel book,
Tales of the Transvaal (1896). His last opera,
Mizpah, was produced in San Francisco in 1906. Searelle died in England of cancer on 18 December 1907 at East Molesey, Surrey.
[Source:
Australian Variety Theatre Archive]
