Bella Alten

Bella Alten (30 June 1877 – 31 December 1962) was an operatic soprano born in Zaskaczewo, Poland, whose career encompassed both the operatic stage and Broadway. She received her musical training at the Imperial Conservatory in Berlin under Gustav Engel and Joachim, and subsequently studied with Aglaja Orgeni in Dresden. Her operatic debut came in 1897 in the role of Aennchen in Der Freischütz, after which she performed in Berlin, Brunswick, Cologne, and London. It was during her time at Covent Garden, where she was singing Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, Nedda in Pagliacci, and Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg under Hans Richter, that Metropolitan Opera General Manager Heinrich Conried engaged her for the company.

Alten made her New York debut in November 1904 as Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro alongside Emma Eames, Marcella Sembrich, and Antonio Scotti. Over nine seasons at the Metropolitan, spanning 1904–1908 and 1909–1914, she sang 31 different roles across 426 total performances, appearing in casts with Enrico Caruso, Nellie Melba, Geraldine Farrar, Emmy Destinn, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Olive Fremstad, Frances Alda, Pol Plançon, Pasquale Amato, and Louise Homer, among others. Her most frequently performed roles at the Met were Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel, which she sang 77 times, Musetta in La Bohème, which she performed 68 times, and Nedda in Pagliacci, which she sang 34 times.

Alten was featured in six Metropolitan Opera premiere performances: Adele in Die Fledermaus in 1905, Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel in 1905, Saffi in Der Zigeunerbaron in 1906, Olga in Fedora in 1906, Columbina in Le Donne Curiose in 1912, and Lisetta in L'amore Medico in 1914. When she sang Gretel in the Met's premiere of Hänsel und Gretel in November 1905, composer Engelbert Humperdinck was present in the audience. That production ran for 11 performances in its first season and was selected by Theodore Roosevelt's wife as a benefit for the Legal Aid Society. Alten sang the role every season she was with the company; in the one season she was absent, the opera was not presented.

Between 1908 and 1909, Alten performed in Braunschweig, Germany, where she created the role of Madama Butterfly for that city, and she also appeared at Bayreuth. Her only known recordings date from this period and consist of three selections from Madama Butterfly and the Ballatella from Pagliacci, recorded for the Gramophone Company and sung in German.

In 1912, Alten appeared on Broadway in Reginald De Koven's Robin Hood, playing Maid Marian alongside Wallace Hyde and Florence Wickham. The production opened on 6 May 1912 at the New Amsterdam Theatre and ran for 64 performances. That same year, during her Metropolitan career, she married Hermann Deri, an Austrian State Banker, and took the name Bella Alten-Deri. Following her Metropolitan tenure, she returned to Vienna, where she continued performing at both the Wiener Hofoper and the Volksoper, and gave concerts and radio broadcasts as late as 1936. When the Nazis came to power in Austria, she and her husband relocated to London. Hermann Deri died in 1941, and Bella Alten died in London on 31 December 1962.