Susan Strong

Born: 23 August 1870.

Died: 11 March 1946.

Born in Brooklyn, she inherited a fortune when her father, lawyer and former New York State Senator Demas Strong (1820–1893), died of heart failure on 9 November, 1893. He had been part of the California gold rush in 1849 and, accumulating a fortune, returned home to Brooklyn and entered politics. With her older siblings married, Susan, aged twenty-two, moved to London and studied singing for her own amusement at the Royal Academy of Music under Hungarian composer and teacher Francis Korbay (1846–1913). Both her vocal and acting ability convinced Korbay that she could be a great diva, and he encouraged her to audition for the English Opera Company. Although she sang as Elsa in Lohengrin (1893), her big-stage debut at Covent Garden two years later as Sieglinde, in an English-language version of Die Walküre, made her an overnight star. The Academy called her performance “a veritable triumph,” while the Times raved, “artistic as her singing is it is thrown into the shade by her wonderful skill as an actress. Gifted with a fine physique and an unusually dignified stage presence, her command of beautiful and appropriate gesture is such as the most experienced singers rarely attain.” In a highly uncharacteristic gesture of appreciation noted by the Times, she was given numerous bouquets at the conclusion of the first act.

Based on this performance, Strong was engaged for the 1896 season at Bayreuth, followed by her New York debut later that fall. In the years that followed she toured America and regularly returned to London. When Aleister Crowley met her Strong’s repertoire had expanded to include the demanding roles of Marguerite (Gounod’s Faust, in 1896), Aïda (Verdi’s Aïda, in 1897–1898), Brünnhilde (Wagner’s Siegfried, in 1898), Donna Anna (Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in 1900), Freïa (Wagner’s Das Rheingold, in 1900), and Gutrune (Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, in 1900). She originally performed as Venus at Covent Garden in Tannhäuser in June 1899, and reprised both the role and the venue in May–June 1900, which matches the time in which Crowley says he saw her portray Venus at Covent Garden.

After a few more years of singing, she retired from the stage to open a high-class London laundry on Baker Street called Nettoyage de Linge de Luxe. Despite the rave reviews she received at the time, the New Grove Dictionary of Opera accords Strong a less illustrious place in history: “Her few recordings, mostly of songs, show an imaginative artist with a voice probably not meant by nature for the heavy roles she undertook.”

Crowley met Strong at one of the semi-public performances of MacGregor Mathers' Rites of Isis.  Crowley met up with her again in London when she sang the part of Venus in Tannhäuser on 22 June, 1899.  A torrid romance followed during which Susan swore to divorce her American husband and devote herself to Crowley.  However on her return to the US, around October 1899, she apparently cooled in ardour.  Crowley followed her to New York in June of the following year, but by then she was already on her way back to the UK to appear in performances of the Royal Opera House, Convent Garden. During 1900, while in Mexico City, Crowley experienced an epiphany, during which he transcribed his play, titled Tannhäuser.  He attributed the inspiration of this play to his romance with Susan Strong.