Feb. 4, 2010 - The term "horse opera" today usually refers to the era of the Singing Cowboy and the movie serials of the 1930s. Silent film star William S. Hart is said to have coined the term because certain musical interludes in these films featured the singing cowboy serenading his horse. In some snooty quarters, the term is used to lump together any entertainment with a Western setting.
The first horse opera in Texas was a stage production of Lord Byron's romantic poem "Mazeppa" in Houston, in May of 1839. The April 3, 1839 edition of "The Morning Star" newspaper noted that a Mr. Lewellen's "well known and high celebrated horse Timour will appear." Any production where the horse gets all the advance publicity has to be considered a true horse opera.
Byron's poem tells of a page whose dalliance with the wife of a proud count is sentenced to be bound "in nature's nakedness," back to back, on a wild horse that is then turned loose in the wilderness, pursued by a pack of wolves.
A Texas woman, Adah Isaacs Menken, often referred to as La Menken or the Great Menken, took the drama on a world tour and made it the most famous horse opera of all time, as well as it made Menken the most famous woman of her day. At one time, she was said to be the most photographed woman in the world, and she is often referred to as America's first entertainment celebrity.
That Menken grew up in Texas is pretty well accepted by historians, but her early life beyond that is a tangle of fictions that she mostly created herself. In one version of her childhood, she was the daughter of a French nobleman. In another version, she was captured by Indians in Texas, ala Cynthia Ann Parker, but was rescued (after anywhere from three weeks to three months) by the Texas Rangers. Another version has her growing up as the adopted daughter of Sam Houston.
She most likely was born in either Memphis or New Orleans with the name Adelaide Bertha Theodore. Though she is often referred to as a student at Nacogdoches University, there is no evidence of that. Thomas Peck Ochiltree, a Texas Ranger, Confederate hero and Congressman, reportedly knew her well in Nacogdoches, and had a teenage crush on her until she stole his boots one Christmas Eve.
She also shows up in Liberty in the 1850s, where she befriended local journalists and staged readings of Shakespeare and published poems and essays in the "Liberty Gazette. " A Liberty resident recalled seeing her and her sister Josephine perform in Galveston. Adah's performance was memorable because she performed her role wearing pink tights. The title character in the movie "Heller in Pink Tights" is said to be inspired by her.
The capture by Native Americans supposedly happened around the time of her stay in Liberty. The length of captivity ranged from three weeks to three years, and featured a Chief Eagle Eye who she credited with teaching her to ride well enough to "do her own stunts" while riding in "Mazeppa."
Adah probably met her first husband, Alexander Isaac Menken, in Galveston where they were members of the company at Neitsch's Theater. They eloped to Livingston, and were married on April 3, 1856. The two soon divorced and she remarried several times -- though not always with the benefit of a legal divorce from the previous husband. She used her first husband's name throughout her stage career as Adah Isaacs Menken.
With him, she toured the South and West, but with little success until she was cast in the lead role of "Mazeppa." She made her first appearance as Mazeppa at the Green Street Theater in Albany, New York before the largest audience in the history of that theater. She performed the role in San Francisco, England and in New York City where she played to a house at Wood's Broadway Theater that, according to one account, was "jammed to suffocation." Menken's performance in Paris, in 1866, has been described as the greatest triumph ever accorded an American actress.
Adah Isaacs Menken fell ill after a performance in Paris, and died at the tender age of 33, penniless by some accounts. As she lay dying she wrote these words: "I am lost to art and life, yet when all is said and done, have I not at my age tasted more of life than lost women who live to be a hundred."
