SCHUMANN-HEINK, Ernestine (1861-1936)
Price: $65.00
Description:Austrian operatic contralto and mezzo-soprano.
SIG – Vintage signature on her engraved calling card, dated 5/12/1935. Nice example.
Between 1897 and 1901 Schumann-Heink took part in four consecutive Covent Garden seasons, and became a regular member of the Metropolitan company for a similar period (1898–1903), returning subsequently for single seasons only. By then she had begun the series of popular and profitable cross-country American concert tours that occupied much of the rest of her long career. In 1909 she returned to Dresden to sing the part of Clytemnestra in the première of Elektra. Although she could sing (and very well) virtually anything, her English and American stage career centred on Wagner; and it was as Erda that she bade farewell to the Metropolitan in 1932, still captivating the audience, as the American critic Olin Downes wrote, with ‘knowledge and imagination embodied in the tone and in every syllable of the text she delivered so memorably’. These words well describe the effect vividly conveyed by her Erda and Waltraute recordings made less than three years before. Although largely unrepresentative of her serious repertory, her many other recordings, made over a period of 25 years, give a splendid impression of her powers: of her opulent and flexible tones from low D to high B, the amazing fullness and evenness of her shake, her artistic conviction, dramatic temperament and vivid enunciation. Among them should be mentioned the brindisi from Lucrezia Borgia (several versions, all good), the prison scene from Le prophète, ‘Parto, parto’ from La clemenza di Tito, and the duet with Caruso (‘Ai nostri monti’) from Il trovatore.” Desmond Shawe-Taylor in Grove Music Online.