Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink (15 June, 1861 - 17 November, 1936) was a well-known opera singer, noted for the great control, tone, beauty, and wide range of her singing.
She was born as Tini Rössler to a German-speaking family in the town of Lieben, near Prague, now in the Czech Republic but then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her father, Hans Rössler, was a shoe maker for the Austrian army; her mother was Charlotte née Goldman, born in Italy.
She made her operatic debut in Dresden in 1878 as Azucena in Il Trovatore.
In 1882 she married Ernest Heink, secretary of the Dresden Opera, with whom she had four children; he soon left her and they were divorced in 1893. That year she married actor Paul Schumann, by whom she had three children. The second marriage lasted until Paul Schumann's death in 1904.
She performed with Gustav Mahler at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, and became well known for her performances of the works of Richard Wagner at Bayreuth, singing at the Bayreuth Festivals from 1896 to 1914.
She first sang at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1898, and performed with the Met regularly thereafter for decades.
Schumann-Heink made the first of her many phonograph recordings in 1900.
In 1905 she married William Rapp, Jr. (They divorced in 1915.)
She became a naturalized U.S. citizen on 10 February 1905, and lived on Caldwell Mountain, near Montclair, New Jersey in her “Villa Fides” from April 1906 to December 1911, when she moved to 500 acres of farm land (which were then just outside of San Diego, California, and which she had bought in January 1910), where she would live for most of her life.
In 1909 she created the role of Clytemnestra in debut of Richard Strauss' Elektra, which she said she had no high opinion of. Strauss, for his part, was not entirely taken by Schumann-Heink; according to one story, during rehearsals he told the orchestra "Louder! I can still hear Mme. Schumann-Heink!"
During World War I she toured the United States raising money for the war effort, although she had relatives fighting on both sides of the war, including a son fighting for Germany.
In 1926 she first sang Silent Night (in both German and English) over the radio for Christmas. This became a Christmas tradition with US radio listeners through Christmas of 1935.
Her last performance at the Met was in 1932.
In her later years she had a weekly radio program.
Ernestine Schumann-Heink died of leukaemia.
External link
- Schumann-Heink on cantabile-subito.de Biography with photos and audio samples