Up for auction "Operatic Contralto" Ernestine Schumann-Heink Signed 2.5X6.25 Page.

ES-2887

Ernestine Schumann-Heink (15 June 1861 – 17 November 1936) was a Bohemian-born Austrian-American operatic contralto of German Bohemian descent. She was noted for the flexibility and wide range of her voice. Ernestine Amalie Pauline Rössler was born on 15 June 1861 to a German-speaking family at Libeň (German: Lieben),[2] Bohemia, Austrian Empire, which is now part of the city of Prague, Czech Republic. She was baptized Catholic five days later. Her father, who called his daughter "Tini",was Hans Rössler. Before working as a shoe maker, he served as an Austrian cavalry officer. He had been stationed in northern Italy (then an Austrian protectorate), where he met and married Charlotte Goldman (Rössler), with whom he returned to Libeň. Her maternal grandmother, Leah Kohn, was of Hungarian Jewish. descent and first prophesied Ernestine's successful career. When Ernestine was three years old, the family moved to Verona. In 1866, at the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War, the family moved to Prague, where she was schooled at the Ursuline Convent. At war's end, the Roesslers moved to Podgórze, now part of Kraków, where she attended the St. Andreas Convent. The family moved again to Graz when Ernestine was thirteen. Here she met Marietta von LeClair, a retired opera singer, who agreed to give her voice lessons. In 1876, Ernestine gave her first professional performance (age 15) as alto soloist in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Graz. Her operatic debut was on 15 October 1878 at Dresden's Royal Opera House, where for four seasons she played the role of Azucena in Il trovatore[6]，and served as principal contralto when she was 17. erminated.[8] Heink took a job at the local customs house and was soon transferred to Hamburg. Ernestine remained in Dresden to pursue her career, and eventually rejoined her husband when she secured a position at the Hamburg Opera. She went on to have four children with Heink: August, Charlotte, Henry and Hans. Ernest Heink was again thrown out of work when Saxons were banned from government positions, and departed to Saxony to find work. Ernestine, pregnant, did not follow him; they were divorced in 1892 when Ernestine was thirty-one years old. She came to the United States to make a brief foray into the Broadway theater, playing in Julian Edwards' operetta Love's Lottery, in which her performance was noted for the fact that she often broke off to ask the audience whether her English was good enough. She left the production after 50 performances and soon returned to opera. Her breakthrough into leading roles was provided when prima donna Marie Goetze argued with the director of the Hamburg opera. He asked Ernestine to sing the title role of Carmen, without rehearsal, which she did to great acclaim. Goetze, in a fit of pique, cancelled out of the role of Fidès in Le prophète, to be performed the following night, and was again replaced by Ernestine. Schumann-Heink replaced Goetze as Ortrud in Lohengrin the following evening, one more time without rehearsal, and was offered a ten-year contract. In 1887, Ernestine sang Johannes Brahms' Alto Rhapsody under the direction of Hans von Bülow in a concert in Hamburg, with Brahms in attendance. She was then engaged by Bülow to sing in a cycle of Mozart performances later that year. However, Ernestine had to withdraw from these performances due to the coincidence with the birth of her fourth child, Hans, in November of 1887. This withdrawal angered Bülow, and their relationship did not continue. After the divorce from her first husband, she married with Paul Schumann, an actor and director of the Thalia Theater in Hamburg in 1892. Ernestine acquired a stepson, Walter, and had three more children with Paul: Ferdinand Schumann, Marie Schumann and George Washington Schumann. This last boy was born in New York City, named by her good-humored mother with suggestion of the doctor who delivered the baby. One of their children, Ferdinand Schumann-Heink (1893–1958) was a prolific, though mostly unbilled, Hollywood character actor. It was a happy family. Paul died in Germany, 28 November 1904. While fighting a legal battle in Germany over her late husband's estate, she filed her United States naturalization papers on 10 February 1905, and became a U.S. citizen on 3 March 1908. Schumann-Heink performed with Gustav Mahler at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, during the Hamburg company's London season in 1892, and became well known for her performances of the works of Richard Wagner, forging "a long and fruitful relationship with [the Annual] Bayreuth [Wagnerian music Festival]" that "lasted from 1896 to 1914". rnestine's first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City was in 1899, and she performed regularly there until 1932. She recorded the first of her many musical "gramophone" performances in 1900. Several of these early sound recordings originally released on 78 RPM discs have been reissued on CD format. Although there are some imperfections in her singing, her musical technique still leave a deep impression on the audience.