GG: Anna Russell

["Junichi Miyazawa" <walkingtune@bigfoot.com>]

I am still translating the interview-formatted linernotes
for the Wagner transcription into Japanese:

KH:  Well, now do these motives of yours relate
thematically to the rest of the work?
GG:  Well, Ken, I'll tell you.  I'd like to know the "Ring" cycle
as well as Anna Russell does, so that I could say with assurance
that they're really an inversion of the forge-motif, or something
--but I don't, and they aren't--at least as far as I know.
They're simply a very pragmatic solution to a very real problem--
but, if I do say so myself, they do sound convincingly Wagnarian.


Could anyone tell me who Anna Russell is?

I made a search on Yahoo and found the following interesting site:

http://www.radio.cbc.ca/programs/takefive/PERFORMANCE/A_RUSSELL/ANNA.html

Here, you can listen to Anna Russell and a Canadian conductor Mario Bernardi
singing the Scottish Rhapsody from Walton's Facade (REAL AUDIO).
It is very amusing.  I remember GG and Patricia Rideout did the same.

I understand she is a comedian-singer, a "musical catoonist", 
and there are some discs available.

Moreover on the same site:

>The Ring of the Nibellungs* 
>("the only grand opera that comes in the giant economy size") 
>Her analysis of Wagner's 'Ring' cycle, is her undoubted 
>masterpiece.  To call it funny is to understate the obvious. 
>More important, however, beneath the laughter is an accurate 
>musical and dramatic analysis of the tetralogy that countless 
>university lecturers might envy. And the better you know your 
>Wagner, the funnier hers will be. 
>*Included in "The Anna Russell Album?,"(Sony MKD 47252)

So this is what GG refered to with Anna Russell.
I understand she made a reduced (and funny) version of the Ring cycle.
Could anyone tell me more about Anna Russell
and her "Ring" cycle well enough to understand accurately
what GG means in the interview and to add a footnote for it?

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Junichi

P.S. I got to know she was born in 1911.  Is she still alive?
Was/Is she fairly famous?  Particularly in Canada?
I read Sir Earnest MacMillan used to invite her to his annual
Chrismas concerts of TSO.

****************************************
  Junichi Miyazawa, Tokyo 
  walkingtune@bigfoot.com
  (alias for: farnorth@mbc.sphere.ne.jp)
****************************************
  http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/3739