Beloved comedienne and vocalist Anna Russell, who died last week at the ripe age of 94, leaves behind a legacy of laughter and a collection of impish musical satires. Happily, these comic gems will live on through recordings.

The daughter of a British colonel, Miss Russell enjoyed a high-society upbringing in London in the early decades of the 20th century. (High enough for her to be presented at court in 1934.) In time, her upper-crust British accent and aristocratic air would make her on-stage shenanigans all the funnier.

Of particular interest to speechwriters is Miss Russell’s side-splitting impersonation of a harried women’s club president trying to introduce a visiting pianist. It is a textbook example of how not to make an introduction:

“Normally our social chairman would introduce our guest artist. But she’s been in bed for a week with the doctor.”

[LAUGHTER]

“I think you’re very unkind! She’s having a horrible time!!!”

Originally trained as a singer, Miss Russell got her first big break in the 1930s, when asked to substitute for the lead soprano in a British production of Pietro Mascagni’s opera, Cavalleria Rusticana.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a break she didn’t expect. When the action called for the tenor to throw her to the floor, she twisted her ankle and fell backwards, knocking over the scenery. The ensuing laughter ended the performance and her operatic career, but made her aware of her considerable gift for comedy.

In the years that followed, Miss Russell would demonstrate that gift in such hilarious spoofs as “Wind Instruments I Have Known”, “Arias for Loud Singers With No Brains”, “How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera”, and her irreverent analysis of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen, which became her trademark

Eventually, Russell’s analysis of the Ring acquired a cult audience so devoted that her fans would recite the punch lines along with her whenever she performed it.

Wagner worshippers were not amused but, paradoxically, the better one knows the Ring, the more one appreciates Russell’s delectable inside jokes. As, for example, when Russell explains the significance of Sieglinde yielding to Siegmund’s amorous advances in Act One of Die Walkure: “She’s married to Hunding – so it’s immoral. And she’s Siegmund’s own sister – so it’s illegal. But that’s the wonderful thing about grand opera: you can do anything you want as long as you sing it.”

In the end, though, the joke was on the purists. Wagner’s cycle of four Brobdingnagian operas takes about 15 hours to perform. Miss Russell managed to make this intimidating work both intelligible and entertaining to a mass audience in about 15 minutes. As speechwriters, it’s worthwhile for us to study how shrewdly she was able to compress such a wealth of thematic material into a few well-chosen and witty words.

Note: Russell’s “Ring” is available on the Sony CD, “The Anna Russell Album.” You can find it on Amazon.com. But if you die laughing at it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.