OVERBECK, Ella

Born in Russia, Overbeck was brought to England as a young child by her parents, both Russians. Following their deaths, she was adopted by an English woman, and educated at the Royal College of Music. She was piano accompanist to Clara Butt and students of Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García in London. In the 1890s she made friends with Edith Craig (1869-1947) and her brother Edward, son and daughter of leading British actress Ellen Terry, and wrote the stage music for Edward's adaptation of Alfred de Musset's On ne badine pas avec l'amour (as No Trifling with Love), which was performed in Uxbridge in 1894. Overbeck's music was praised by the Musical Times; other early works, such as a violin sonata and various songs, were also positively reviewed by the musical press.

In 1898 Overbeck, visiting Taormina (a resort in Sicily, and at the time a popular gay tourist destination) was introduced to Zinaida Hippius. Hippius was married to a writer, Merezhkovsky, but was bisexual, and she and Overbeck began an affair. Overbeck later travelled to join Hippius in Saint Petersburg. In the winter of 1902-3 Merezhkovsky's translations of Euripides' Hippolytus and Sophocles' Antigone were performed with Overbeck's incidental music at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. Overbeck later returned to Britain, basing herself in South West England. Her orchestral music became a regular feature of Frank Winterbottom's "Symphony Concerts" in Plymouth, including a performance of her Petersburg stage music in East Stonehouse at Plymouth on 21 February 1904, which Baroness Overbeck conducted herself. During the First World War she may have based herself in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex.