Dorothy Kirsten

Dorothy Kirsten (July 6, 1910 – November 18, 1992) was an American operatic soprano born in Montclair, New Jersey. She became the first singer in Metropolitan Opera history to perform on that stage for thirty consecutive years and the first opera star to appear on the cover of Life magazine.

Kirsten grew up in a musically active family: her mother was an organist and music teacher, her grandfather was a conductor, and her great-aunt, Catherine Hayes, was an opera singer. She began studying piano as a child but left high school at sixteen to work for the Singer Corporation and for New Jersey Bell, pursuing voice study in her spare time. Her voice teacher, Louis Darnay, eventually hired her as a secretary and maid.

By the late 1930s Kirsten had established herself as a radio singer on WINS, a member of the Kate Smith Chorus, and a vocalist with pop orchestras. Beginning in 1938 she studied under the mentorship of Grace Moore, who arranged for her to work with Astolfo Pescia in Rome. The outbreak of World War II cut short her European studies, and she returned to the United States in 1939, making her debut at the New York World's Fair. Her Broadway appearances spanned 1938 to 1944 and included the musical The New Moon alongside productions of Manon Lescaut, La Traviata, and La Bohème. Operatic engagements followed at the Chicago Opera Company, where she sang Manon in 1940, the San Carlo Opera Company in 1942, the New York City Opera in 1943, and both the San Francisco Opera and the New York Philharmonic in 1945. Her radio program Keepsakes ran for a year during 1943–44.

In 1943 Kirsten joined the Philadelphia La Scala Opera Company as a principal soprano, remaining with the company through 1947. Her debut with that organization took place on May 18, 1943, at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, where she sang Mimì in Puccini's La bohème opposite Nino Martini, with Armand Balendonck conducting. During the 1943–1944 season at the Academy of Music she performed Mimì repeatedly and sang Nedda in Pagliacci with Giovanni Martinelli as Canio. She also toured with the company to Detroit in October 1943. Kirsten opened the company's 1944–1945 season as Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen with Bruna Castagna in the title role and toured to Cleveland singing Mimì. In February 1946 she traveled with the company to Washington, D.C., to perform Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, and her final season with the organization, 1946–1947, included Cio-cio-san in Madama Butterfly and Juliette in Roméo et Juliette.

Kirsten made her Metropolitan Opera debut on December 1, 1945, singing Mimì in La bohème, and continued performing with the Met for the following thirty years. Her final Met appearance came on February 10, 1979, in the title role of Tosca. During her career she also sang Violetta in La traviata at the Bolshoi Opera during a 1962 tour of the USSR and participated in the American premieres of William Walton's Troilus and Cressida and Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites in San Francisco. In December 1949 she recorded Manon Lescaut with tenor Jussi Björling. Beyond the opera house, Kirsten appeared on radio alongside Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Nelson Eddy, Jack Benny, Gordon MacRae, and Perry Como, and she appeared in the films Mr. Music (1950) and The Great Caruso (1951). In 1965 she contributed "I Wonder as I Wander" and "Joy to the World" to the Firestone album Your Favorite Christmas Music, Volume 4.

Kirsten was married three times. Her first husband was radio executive Edward MacKayes Oates; they divorced in 1949. In 1951 she married Eugene Chapman, assistant dean of the UCLA Medical School, who died three years later. Her third marriage, in 1955, was to neurosurgeon John "Jack" Douglas French, MD, co-founder and first director of the UCLA Brain Research Institute. In 1982 Dr. French was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and Kirsten ended her operatic career to devote herself to finding a cure. In 1983 she founded the John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation, and she raised funds to build the first residential facility for Alzheimer's patients in the United States, which opened in 1987. Dr. French died at the John Douglas French Center for Alzheimer's Disease in 1989. In 2020 the foundation established an endowed neurology chair at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Kirsten suffered a stroke on November 5, 1992, and died of complications on November 18, 1992, in Los Angeles, California. She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Her papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. She published a memoir, A Time To Sing, in 1982.