William Lines Hubbard (1867-1951), who went by the name Havrah Hubbard from at least the mid-1910s, was a music and theater critic in Chicago and San Diego. Hubbard edited twelve volumes of The Imperial History and Encyclopedia of Music, published in 1908-1910. The second volume is one of the earliest histories of American music. He was known also for his "Operalogues," dramatic recitations of Grand Opera libretti, which he performed throughout the United States.
Hubbard was born in 1867 in Farmersville, New York, where his grandfather, Russell Hubbard, settled in 1821. The only one of his parents' three children to survive past childhood, W. L. Hubbard moved with his parents to Kinmundy, a town in Southern Illinois, and then to Chicago in 1880. His father, William Riley Hubbard, was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1874. Like Russell Hubbard, who was an active member of the Methodist church before converting to "modern spiritualism" later in life, W. R. Hubbard was interested in occultism and psychic phenomena. In the 1890s, W. R. Hubbard lived in California while W. L. Hubbard studied in Dresden, accompanied by his mother Augusta Hubbard.
After graduating from high school, W. L. Hubbard took a job as a bookkeeper at the Chicago Evening Journal and soon began writing music reviews. During this time he studied piano with Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler. In 1891 Hubbard became music editor of the Chicago Tribune and later that year attended the Mozart and Wagner Festivals at Salzburg and Bayreuth as a critic. From 1893 to 1898 he studied piano, theory, composition, and voice in Dresden with such individuals as Emil Kronke, Hermann Scholtz, Hans Fahrmann, Giovanni Battista Lamperti and Julie Bachi-Fahrmann. Hubbard returned to Chicago for less than a year before traveling to Vienna, where he lived for a year as a correspondent for the Tribune while studying voice with Josef Steineder. From 1900 to 1907 Hubbard again lived in Chicago, serving as music and drama critic and editor for the Tribune while also writing about music and teaching voice lessons.
In the 1910s W. L. Hubbard was among the first residents of the Grossmont Art Colony in San Diego County, where he lived with Julia A. Read in a house they called Ledgehome. Twenty years his senior, Read is listed in the 1930 U.S. census report as Hubbard's servant; a secondary source identifies her as Hubbard's aunt. In his letters and diaries Hubbard refers to Read exclusively as "Dearest," and there is evidence that Hubbard was her caretaker. In the 1932, Hubbard and Read rented out Ledgehome and traveled to Europe on the same ship as Albert and Elsa Einstein, with whom they socialized.
W. L. Hubbard created many of his "Operalogues" (sometimes publicized as "Opera Talks") in collaboration with the pianist Claude Gotthelf, with whom he performed during the 1910s. Hubbard recited English translations of opera libretti while Gotthelf played musical themes from the operas on the piano. Hubbard often introduced the "Operalogues" with speeches on the cultural importance of presenting Grand Opera in the vernacular. Hubbard presented as many as 100 of these performances a season at schools, clubs, societies, and concert halls in towns and cities throughout the United States. The operas Hubbard presented numbered over two dozen and included Andrea Chenier, Falstaff, Hansel and Gretel, Lohengrin, Louise, The Love of Three Kings (Montemezzi), Madame Butterfly, Der Meistersinger, Monna Vanna (Rachmaninoff), Otello, I Pagliacci, and The Secret of Suzanne (Wolf-Ferrari). In the 1920s Hubbard toured with the pianist Homer Simmons.
Hubbard served as music and drama critic of the San Diego Union from 1928 to 1932 and participated actively in the cultural life of San Diego County. He died in 1951.