Oriska Worden
19th–20th century American actress and singer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Oriska Worden (July 13, 1868 – October 1, 1954), born Oriska Haverfield, was an American actress and singer.
July 13, 1868
Oriska Worden | |
|---|---|
Oriska Worden in costume, from a 1904 publication | |
| Born | Oriska Haverfield July 13, 1868 Cadiz, Ohio, US |
| Died | October 1, 1954 (aged 86) Hempstead, New York, US |
| Other names | Oriska Breidinger, Oriska Baird |
| Occupations | Singer, actress |
| Years active | 1890s–1910s |
Early life and education
Oriska Haverfield was born in Cadiz, Ohio, the daughter of George A. Haverfield and Mattie Elna Warman Haverfield. Her father was a disabled veteran of the American Civil War; he died in 1886.[1] Her mother remarried, to Col. Frederick W. Worden in 1888; her stepfather's brother was Admiral John Lorimer Worden.[2] As a young woman, Oriska Worden helped her mother, a physician and orthopedic surgeon who ran "a summer sanitarium and school of physical culture" in Michigan.[3]
Worden attended the Mount du Chantal convent school in West Virginia,[4] and studied voice at the Michigan State Normal Conservatory of Music in Ypsilanti, Michigan,[5] graduating in 1892.[6][7] She pursued further musical studies in Paris with Belgian singer Jacques Bouhy.[2]
Career
Worden sang with the Castle Square Opera Company of Boston, early in her career.[8][9] In 1897, she toured in the American West with a stock company.[2] In 1899, she modeled and spoke about "the new French tight-fitting skirt" for a newspaper feature.[10]
On Broadway she appeared in The Supper Club (1901–1902) and in My Lady Molly (1904).[11] In 1905, she was in vaudeville starring in The Queen's Fan,[12] an operetta.[13][14] She was in a comic opera, Burning to Sing, in vaudeville in 1907.[15][16]
Worden taught at the summer school of the Petoskey Normal Conservatory in 1899.[17] In 1908, she began teaching voice students at a studio in Carnegie Building in New York.[18] In 1912, she announced that she was directing a theatrical costuming department for Renard's in New York.[19]
Personal life
Worden married William P. Baird in Tennessee in 1884.[20] She married wealthy Charles W. Glover in 1892.[21][22] In 1901 she announced that she would sue his parents for alienation of affection, and Glover himself for alimony,[8] after they were divorced in 1895.[4] She owned property in Petoskey, Michigan, until she sold it in 1915.[23] Her third husband was John Breidinger; they married in New York in 1923. Oriska Breidinger died in 1954, at the age of 86, in Hempstead, New York.[24]
