THE D'OYLY CARTE OPERA COMPANY

Ernest Leeman as The Man in Kismet

Ernest Leeman (1908-09)

[Born Lowell, Massachusetts 1875]

Tenor Ernest Reginald Leeman served in the chorus with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy during the Second London Repertory Season (April 1908-March 1909), his only engagement with the Company. In October 1908 he appeared in his first named part: filling in for Strafford Moss as Griffith David in A Welsh Sunset, then a companion piece with H.M.S. Pinafore on the Savoy bill. In December 1908, when A Welsh Sunset was restored as curtain raiser for The Pirates of Penzance, Leeman took Griffith David as his own (Moss having gone on tour). Leeman also appeared for a short time that month as Frederic in Pirates. In January 1909, The Gondoliers was revived with Leeman as Francesco, and in February 1909 he substituted again as Frederic and also as Nanki-Poo in The Mikado.

From April 1911 to January 1912 he appeared as The Man in Kismet at the Garrick, and in 1915 took a small part in a burlesque at the Duke of York's called Rosy Rapture, The Pride of the Beauty Chorus. In 1919 he appeared at the St. Martin's in A Certain Liveliness, and at Wyndham's in His Little Widows. In the 1920s he worked at the Queen's (A Pair of Sixes, 1920), the Playhouse (The Sign on the Door, 1921), the Comedy (Quarantine, 1922), Wyndham's (The Flame, 1924), the Royalty (Polly Preferred, 1924), the Garrick (Six-Cylinder Love, 1924-25), and the Shaftesbury (Dear Little Billie, 1925).

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