Clendining, Elizabeth

1768

1799

Elizabeth Clendining was born at Stourhead, Wiltshire, in 1768, the daughter of Mr Arnold, a prominent choir singer at Salisbury, Wells and Dublin. She sang at the Dublin Rotunda in 1785, and soon married William Clendining, a surgeon. She retired from singing, but after six years her husband’s debts drove her back on to the concert stage. She sang at Bath in 1792 and came under the tutelage of the eminent teacher Rauzzini. She came to London in June 1792 and made her first appearance at Covent Garden as Clara in “Hartford Bridge” on 3 November, when the press hailed her as having ‘musical talents of the very first rank.’ Mrs Clendining continued at Covent Garden for five more seasons, playing a series of singing ingenues: Clara in “The Duenna”, Rosetta in “Love in a Village”, Lucy in “Love and War”, Mary in “Sprigs of Laurel”, Lorenza in “The Castle of Andalusia” and Yarico in “Inkle and Yarico”. Her husband died at Portsmouth in April 1793. Mrs Clendining was discharged from Covent Garden at the end of the season 1797-98 and went to act at Edinburgh. But she was already quite ill, and she died in Edinburgh on 16 July 1799.