soprano

Moncrieff made highly successful gramophone recordings in Australia for the Columbia Graphophone Co. between 12 October 1928 and 4 June 1935. She was a regular visitor to the company studios at Homebush, Sydney, making eighty-four titles that were released on either Regal, Regal-Zonophone or Columbia labels as ten-inch discs. These well-known musical comedy favorites sold far better than similar material by many famous overseas artists. Most of these recordings were reissued by EMI Records Australia and enjoyed healthy sales. Gladys Moncrieff had a powerful, wide-ranging, rich soprano voice, and excellent diction. Undemonstrative in behavior, she approached her singing like a craft, meticulously and unostentatiously. She dressed simply and did not shun menial tasks. Her large, informal parties were memorable for her superb cooking, especially for her pie with seventy dozen oysters. Perhaps it was also her sense of fun and tender-heartedness that attracted her large following of 'gallery girls', women who queued for standing room and followed her movements with flowers and mail. She became a legend in Australia in her lifetime, respected by her professional colleagues, and loved by her devoted public. Her autobiography, My Life of Song (Adelaide, 1971), was ghosted by Lillian Palmer. Source: adb.anu.edu.au/biography/moncrieff-gladys-lillian-7621

See:

Delia Reinhardt en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delia_Reinhardt_(soprano) with a player piano. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_piano "A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using MIDI. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, then declined as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s." This is a Knabe player piano. See www.gentilepiano.com/player.html for some pictures of one before and after restoration.

swanq, thanks for identifying the woman as well as the piano. We'll add that information to our catalog records.

Earlier Bain photo: