Mena Cleary

Mena Cleary was the daughter of Martin Cleary and Maria Coghlan Cleary. She attended a convent school in Ottawa, Canada, then moved to Boston, where she studied music. She also studied voice in Paris with Giovanni Sbriglia.[1]

Mena Cleary was a soprano,[2] her voice "by no means powerful but...very sweet," and "managed with rare skill".[1] Cleary was a member of The Bostonians, a performing troupe.[3] She appeared as "Mirabel" in the original cast of the comic opera Prince Ananias by Victor Herbert, when it debuted in 1894.[4] She also appeared in Girofle-Girofla in 1884[5] Fra Diavolo and The Poachers in 1888,[6] and in Robin Hood, Fatinitza and The Maid of Plymouth in 1894, with the Bostonians.[7]

In 1886, while performing in Fra Diavolo in New Haven, Connecticut, her hair caught fire from a lighted candle on stage. Her co-star Tom Karl quickly extinguished the flames, but his hands were badly burned instead.[8] Members of the audience fainted and shrieked, but Cleary resumed her part "with difficulty" after the fire was out.[9] Her 1888 turn as "Ginetta" in The Poachers drew admiration from a critic in Minnesota, who assured readers that "she is a very clever actress, with such winning ways, and a smiling pretty face, and a voice, while it is not a very great volume, is sweet in tone and as clear as the sound of a bell."[6]

Mena Cleary married "millionaire physician, yachtsman, and globe trotter" John Miller Masury in 1897; they divorced in 1909.[10][11] Mena Cleary Masury died in 1929, aged 62 years, in Brookline, Massachusetts.[12]

Her sister Louise Cleary married a popular singer, Eugene Cowles, whom she met through Mena Cleary's work (Cowles was also in the original cast of Prince Ananias). Their sister Eleanor Cleary married Gerrit Fort.[13] Another sister, Phillinda A. Cleary, married Harley Ellsworth Cummings.[12]