Joan Ruth

Joan Ruth was an American soprano and stage actress born in Boston around 1904. She grew up in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston as one of seven children and pursued a singing career despite her mother's preference that she marry or train as a stenographer. She rejected a marriage proposal from a Boston hardware businessman who asked her to abandon her vocal ambitions. Her early musical training took place at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and in 1922 she relocated to New York City to study with soprano teacher Estelle Liebling.

Ruth's professional activities began in late 1922, when she performed as a soloist at Hugo Riesenfeld's Manhattan theatre in a concert of Franz Schubert's music. In April 1923 she appeared as a soloist at Carnegie Hall in a chamber music concert organized by the Music Students' League, and that August she sang to accompany the silent film Homeward Bound at the Stanley Theatre in Philadelphia. Her professional opera debut came in October 1923 with Melvin H. Dahlberg's touring Wagnerian Opera Company, led musically by conductor Josef Stránský, formerly of the New York Philharmonic. Ruth debuted with the company at Poli's Theatre in Washington, D.C., singing Cherubino in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Her other roles with the company that season included the Forest Bird in Wagner's Siegfried, the Shepherd Boy in Eugen d'Albert's Die toten Augen, the page in Wagner's Tannhäuser, and the Dewman in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel. The tour included a six-week engagement at the Manhattan Opera House in New York City as well as stops in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, and Chicago.

In April 1924 Ruth performed on WOR radio and appeared as a soloist at a Rubinstein Club concert at the Waldorf Astoria. That summer she joined the original touring production of Victor Herbert's operetta The Dream Girl, continuing with the company when it transferred to Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre, where she performed under a different name as a vocalist in the Colonial tableaux scene before leaving the cast in October 1924. That same month she sang at the 28th season of the Maine Music Festival in Bangor, Portland, and Lewiston, performing the role of Inez in Verdi's Il trovatore and the aria "Quando me'n vo'" from Puccini's La bohème.

Ruth sang two seasons at the Metropolitan Opera. Her debut there came in November 1924 as Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen, with Florence Easton in the title role, after a planned debut as Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann did not materialize. She returned to the Met in January 1925 as one of the pages in Tannhäuser and again in March 1925 as Siebel in Gounod's Faust, with Armand Tokatyan in the title role. She also participated in concert events at the Metropolitan Opera House during both the 1924–1925 and 1925–1926 seasons. In February 1925 she gave her Boston recital debut at the Boston Athletic Association. That June she joined a touring variety revue that also featured the Two Black Crows and W. C. Fields. In late July and August 1925 she performed the title roles in Flotow's Martha and Herbert's Naughty Marietta at the St. Louis Municipal Opera, with tenor Ralph Errolle as her leading man in both productions. In August 1925 she performed in a concert at New York University with conductor Edwin Franko Goldman and his band.

In October 1925 Ruth appeared again at the Maine Festival and gave a recital at Aeolian Hall, where her program included the Mad Scene from Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet and the aria "Meinem Hirten bleib ich treu" from Bach's cantata Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn, BWV 92. The following year she undertook a national concert tour with Metropolitan Opera tenor Edward Johnson under the Elwyn Artists Series, performing operatic arias and duets in costume representing scenes from operas including Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Verdi's Rigoletto. Representatives of Puccini's estate informed the pair mid-tour that they could not perform La bohème selections in costume without a full orchestra, so Ruth and Johnson changed to concert dress for those pieces beginning with their Washington, D.C. stop. The tour reached Boston's Symphony Hall, Washington's Auditorium, Toronto, the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Exposition Auditorium, the Oakland Civic Auditorium, the Portland Civic Auditorium, Cleveland's Masonic Hall, and Akron, Ohio, among other venues. On March 14, 1926, Ruth, Johnson, and pianist Elmer Zoller gave a concert broadcast nationally across fifteen radio stations.

Following the conclusion of the Johnson tour, Ruth performed at the Saenger Festival in Peoria, Illinois, and then appeared at the Cincinnati Opera from late June through August 1926, singing Gilda in Rigoletto, Alice Ford in the first Cincinnati presentation of Verdi's Falstaff, and the title role in Martha. During that Cincinnati engagement she returned briefly to New York to perform again in concert with Goldman, a performance broadcast live on WEAF. Ruth had worked as a contracted singer with WEAF in the mid-1920s and appeared on the front cover of Radio Digest on January 16, 1926. On July 25, 1926, she gave a recital broadcast on both WEAF and WGN in Chicago, and in late July and early August 1926 she performed as a soloist with orchestra on WEAF's Atwater Kent Hour broadcasts.

In 1927 Ruth created the role of Sally Negly in the original Broadway production of Sigmund Romberg's musical My Maryland. Two years later she appeared in the 1929 Warner Bros. short film Guido Ciccolini and Eric Zardo. Her performing career extended from the early 1920s into the mid-1940s, encompassing opera, concert, musical theatre, film, and radio.