Ada Meade Saffarans (1884 - February 4, 1965) was an American actress known professionally as Ada Meade. She performed professionally in comic drama, comic opera, and musical comedy.

Early years

Meade was born in 1884 in Lexington, Kentucky. Her father was Daniel T. Saffarans. Her mother was Ada Coles Meade Saffarrans, whose father was a planter in Mississippi and whose grandfather had been acting governor of Mississippi in the early 1800s. Mrs. Saffrans "was the greatest heiress of her day in Mississippi", but misfortune turned the family from a luxurious lifestyle to one of frugality and simplicity. The Saffarans also had a son and another daughter. Meade attended Sayre College and Nazareth Academy. After her mother died, family friends and supporters arranged a benefit singing performance that raised enough money for Meade to go to New York to study.

Career

By age 18, Meade was performing in the operetta ''Babette'' in New York with

Fritzi Scheff Fritzi Scheff (born Friederike Scheff; August 30, 1879 – April 8, 1954) was an American actress and singer. Biography Born Friederike Scheff in Vienna to Dr. Gottfried Scheff and Anna Yeager, she studied at the Hoch Conservatory in Frank ...

. She also performed with Scheff in '' Mlle. Modiste'', and she gained attention when Scheff was unable to perform in the title role in an engagement in Cleveland, leading Meade to fill that role. Her success in that production resulted in formation of the Ada Meade Opera Company. Based in

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, Texas, that company presented ''Madame Sherry'' across the southern United States for two years, after which Meade studied in Paris for a year. Besides its touring presentations, the company performed locally with productions including ''

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'' and ''

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'' in 1908. In addition to ''Babette'' and ''Mlle. Modiste'', Broadway plays in which Meade performed included ''The Two Roses'' (1904), ''

Fatinitza ''Fatinitza'' was the first full-length, three-act operetta by Franz von Suppé. The libretto by F. Zell (a pseudonym for Camillo Walzel) and Richard Genée was based on the libretto to ''La circassienne'' by Eugène Scribe (which had been set t ...

'' (1904), '' High Jinks'' (1913), ''The Red Canary'' (1914), ''A World of Pleasure'' (1915), ''Rambler Rose'' (1917), '' The Girl Behind the Gun'' (1918), and '' Elsie'' (1923). Meade was

prima donna In opera or ''commedia dell'arte'', a prima donna (; Italian for 'first lady'; : ''prime donne'') is the leading female singer in the company, the person to whom the ''prime'' roles would be given. ''Prime donne'' often had grand off-stage pe ...

at the Winter Garden in New Orleans in 1907. In 1924, she was the lead actress for the McGarry theatrical company, whose activities included presenting the musical comedy ''

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'' in

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, New York. Meade retired from performing in 1925 and began a career in business. She worked for a paper company in Niagara Falls before moving to Chicago, where she worked with

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. After that, she was a secretary for the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...

, from which she retired in 1964.

Personal life and death

On February 4, 1965, Meade died in Chicago. Her funeral service was in Lexington, and she was buried there.

Ada Meade Theatre

In 1913, the Hippodrome Theater in Lexington was sold to a group of businessmen in the city. They had the building remodeled and renamed it the Ada Meade Theatre to honor the actress. It was demolished in 1954. It was mostly a venue for vaudeville, but legitimate theater was performed there in 1922-23 when Lexington's Opera House was closed. Meade performed in her namesake theater on April 9, 1918, as part of a bond rally and on January 8 and 9, 1923, starring in the musical comedy ''Elsie''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Meade, Ada 1884 births 1965 deaths 20th-century American actresses Actresses from Kentucky American musical theatre actresses American stage actresses Broadway theatre people