Dorothy Fellowes-Gordon

Dorothy Mary "Dickie" Fellowes-Gordon (3 August 1891 – 11 August 1991) was a Scottish socialite, coal industry heiress and singer. Early life Dorothy Mary Fellowes-Gordon was born on 3 August 1891 in London, the daughter of Arthur William Fellowes-Gordon of Knockespoch, Aberdeenshire, Scotland and his first wife, Mary Beatrice Green. Her paternal grandfather was ADM William Abdy Fellowes-Gordon, son of Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Fellowes and Katherine Mary Abdy (eldest daughter of Sir William Abdy, 6th Baronet). He married Hannah Gordon of Knockespoch in Edinburgh on 16 June 1857, therefore assuming the additional surname of Gordon by Royal Licence in 1876. The Fellowes-Gordon came from Clatt, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Dickie was a distant cousin of The Hon. Reginald Ailwyn Fellowes (1884–1953), and therefore linked to the latter wife, socialite Daisy Fellowes, and Winston Churchill, who was first cousin of Reginald. Her parents divorced in 1904 and her mother remarried Lt Col Alexander Keith Wyllie in 1906. Career As singer Fellowes-Gordon was classically trained as a lyric soprano with Enrico Caruso. Later she performed professionally "Voyons Manon" from Massenet's "Manon", and two French arias in New York in 1916. When she was almost 40 years old, following the advice of her mentor Arturo Toscanini, she spent two years studying music in Milan. She attended the world premiere of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot directed by Toscanini at Teatro alla Scala, Milan on 26 April 1926, when Toscanini stopped the opera at the same point where Puccini, dying, had left it, and Toscanini said "Thus far the master wrote". She was a friend of the American soprano Grace Moore.