Rosemarie Brancato

Rosemarie Brancato (October 2, 1910 – June 18, 1994) was an American coloratura soprano born in Kansas City, Missouri, whose performing career spanned operas, operettas, concerts, and radio broadcasts from the mid-1930s through the 1950s. Her mother, Maddalena Brancato, was an obstetrician. Brancato studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where her voice teacher was Irish bass and composer Thomas Austin-Ball (1872–1944). While still a student, she won the Northeastern regional level of the Atwater Kent Foundation's National Radio Audition in 1930, a national singing contest that awarded radio contracts and prize money. Following her graduation, she continued vocal training in New York City with Estelle Liebling, who was also the teacher of Beverly Sills.

Brancato's professional debut came in 1934 with the Chicago Civic Opera, where she sang the role of Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto after being offered the part just one day before the performance when Marion Talley walked out of the production. The audience responded with an ovation lasting four minutes. That same year she gave a concert of opera arias at the New York Hippodrome with the Cosmopolitan Opera Association and began appearing on WDAF radio in Kansas City. By 1936 she had signed with the Columbia Concerts Corporation, which booked her on national concert tours throughout the United States during the mid to late 1930s. She was also heard regularly on CBS Radio during the late 1930s and 1940s.

Her Broadway career ran from 1944 to 1946. In 1944 she created the role of Madame Boticini in the original Broadway production of Fritz Kreisler's Rhapsody at the New Century Theatre. In 1946 she made her debut with the New York City Opera, portraying Violetta in Verdi's La traviata. She also sang leading roles with the Detroit Civic Light Opera and the Cincinnati Opera.

During the early 1950s Brancato starred in several operettas at the Paper Mill Playhouse, taking on the role of Marianne Beaunoir in Sigmund Romberg's The New Moon in 1950, Nina Hagerup in Robert Wright and George Forrest's Song of Norway in 1951, and Yum-Yum in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado in 1953. In 1952 she performed the role of Sybil in Rudolf Friml's The Firefly at the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera alongside ballerina Patricia Bowman, and returned to that company in 1953 to take the title role in Victor Herbert's Naughty Marietta opposite tenor Brian Sullivan.

Brancato was married to Dr. Lester D. Rothman and was known offstage as Rosemarie Rothman. She died of cancer at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City on June 18, 1994, at the age of 83.