Ernestine Schumann-Heink

Ernestine Schumann-Heink was a Bohemian-born contralto of German Bohemian descent, recognized as one of the foremost operatic dramatic contraltos of her era. Born Ernestine Amalie Pauline Rössler on 15 June 1861 in Libeň, Bohemia, Austrian Empire — a district now part of Prague, Czech Republic — she died on 17 November 1936. Her father, Johann Rössler, had served as an Austrian cavalry officer before working as a shoemaker, and her mother, Charlotte Josepha Goldman, was Jewish. Her maternal grandmother, Leah Kohn, was of Hungarian Jewish descent and was among the first to predict her granddaughter's eventual success.

Schumann-Heink spent her early childhood in Verona, where the family had relocated when she was three. The outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 brought the family to Prague, where she was educated at the Ursuline Convent. After the war, the family settled in Podgórze, now part of Kraków, before moving again to Graz when she was thirteen. There she encountered Marietta von LeClair, a retired opera singer who became her first voice teacher. At fifteen, she gave her first professional performance as alto soloist in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Graz in 1876. Her operatic debut followed on 15 October 1878 at the Dresden Royal Opera House, where she sang the role of Azucena in Il trovatore and served as principal contralto.

In 1882, she married Johann Georg Ernst Albert Heink, secretary of the Saxon State Opera Dresden. The marriage violated both their contracts, and both lost their positions. After Heink relocated to Hamburg for customs work, Ernestine eventually secured a position at the Hamburg Opera and rejoined him there. The couple had four children: August, Charlotte, Henry, and Hans. They divorced in 1892. A career-defining moment at the Hamburg Opera came when prima donna Marie Goetze quarreled with the director, who asked Schumann-Heink to step in as Carmen without rehearsal; her performance earned wide acclaim. She subsequently replaced Goetze in two additional roles on consecutive evenings — Fidès in Le prophète and Ortrud in Lohengrin — both without rehearsal, and was offered a ten-year contract. In 1887, she sang Johannes Brahms' Alto Rhapsody under Hans von Bülow in Hamburg, with Brahms himself in attendance, and was engaged by Bülow for a cycle of Mozart performances that same year, from which she ultimately had to withdraw due to the birth of her fourth child.

Following her divorce from Heink, she married Paul Schumann, an actor and director of the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, in 1892. With him she had three children: Ferdinand, Marie Theresa, and George Washington Schumann, the last born in New York City. Their son Ferdinand Schumann (1893–1958) became a Hollywood character actor. Paul Schumann died in Germany on 28 November 1904. While contesting his estate in German courts, Schumann-Heink filed United States naturalization papers on 10 February 1905 and became a citizen on 3 March 1908.

Her international career encompassed performances at major opera houses across Europe and North America. She performed alongside Gustav Mahler at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, during the Hamburg company's London season in 1892. Her association with the Bayreuth Festival, where she was known for her Wagner performances, extended from 1896 to 1914. Her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City came in 1899, and she continued performing there regularly until 1932. In 1900 she made her first gramophone recordings, several of which were originally released on 78 RPM discs and later reissued on CD. In 1909, she created the role of Klytaemnestra in the world premiere of Richard Strauss's Elektra, a work she described as "a fearful din."

It was during the period following her divorce from her first husband that Schumann-Heink made her Broadway appearance. She came to the United States and appeared in Julian Edwards' operetta Love's Lottery in 1904, a production in which she was noted for pausing to ask the audience whether her English was sufficiently clear. She left the production after fifty performances and returned to opera. The surname she carried professionally combined those of her first two husbands, Heink and Schumann.

On 27 May 1905, at age forty-three, she married her manager William Rapp Jr., son of Wilhelm Rapp, in Chicago, Illinois. The couple lived on Grandview Avenue in North Caldwell, New Jersey, from April 1906 to December 1911, before relocating to a five-hundred-acre property outside San Diego, California, which she had purchased in January 1910. They separated in December 1911, and their divorce was finalized in 1914, with an appeals court upholding the decision in 1915.

During her years in North Caldwell, Schumann-Heink performed a benefit concert on 10 September 1912 at the First Presbyterian Church in Caldwell, New Jersey — the birthplace of President Grover Cleveland — to raise funds for the purchase of the adjacent manse where Cleveland had been born. The Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Association subsequently acquired the property in 1913 and opened it as a public museum. During World War I, she entertained troops, raised money for Liberty Bonds, and supported the Red Cross, the Knights of Columbus, the Young Men's Christian Association, and Jewish War Relief, continuing this work despite having relatives serving on both sides of the conflict. In 1915, she appeared as herself in the early documentary film Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco, directed by Fatty Arbuckle.