Virginia MacWatters

Virginia MacWatters (June 19, 1912 – November 5, 2005) was an American coloratura soprano and university professor born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Frederick K. and Idoleein (née Hallowell) MacWatters. Her musical education began at age eight with piano studies at the Zeckwer Hahn Musical Academy in Philadelphia. At twelve, she received a one-year scholarship to study voice with Henrietta Conrad, a former member of the Dresden Royal Opera. Her first vocal performance in a staged role came during junior high school, when she appeared as Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance. After completing her education at the Philadelphia Normal School for Teachers, MacWatters financed continued study through substitute teaching and church singing across the Philadelphia area.

She subsequently earned a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied opera and acting under Ernest Lert and Greta Stauber. Following her graduation from Curtis, MacWatters pursued further vocal training with Estelle Liebling in New York City. In 1941, she took second prize in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air, after which she made her debut with the New Opera Company. Between 1942 and 1944, MacWatters sang 611 Broadway performances as Adele in Rosalinda, an adaptation of Die Fledermaus conducted by Erich Korngold. Her formal operatic debut came in 1944 at the San Francisco Opera, where she sang Musetta in La bohème.

MacWatters's Broadway appearances extended across several productions between 1942 and 1946. In addition to Rosalinda, she appeared in La serva padrona as Serpina in 1944 and took the role of Brook Whitney in Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston in 1945. Her Broadway credits also include Ariadne auf Naxos, The Pirates of Penzance, Rigoletto, and The Secret of Suzanne, among other productions.

From 1946 to 1951, MacWatters sang regularly with the New York City Opera, accumulating a wide range of roles. At that company she performed Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance under the baton of Julius Rudel, Gilda in Rigoletto alongside Giuseppe Valdengo and Luigi Infantino, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia opposite Enzo Mascherini, Laetitia in The Old Maid and the Thief with Marie Powers, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Olympia in Les contes d'Hoffmann, and Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos. In 1947, she appeared at Covent Garden during its first postwar season of opera in English, singing the title role in Manon and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. At the New Orleans Opera Association, she was seen as Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia in 1949, as Adele in Die Fledermaus with Thomas Hayward in 1955, and as a cast member of Le nozze di Figaro opposite Norman Treigle in the title role in 1956.

MacWatters's association with the Metropolitan Opera included the national tour of Garson Kanin's production of Die Fledermaus from 1951 to 1952, in which she again played Adele. Her house debut at the Met was also in that role, with Regina Resnik and later Eleanor Steber as Rosalinde von Eisenstein. From 1953 to 1955, she performed in La bohème at the Met opposite Victoria de los Ángeles as Mimì. She returned to the company in 1957 to sing Fiakermilli in Arabella, with Lisa della Casa in the cast and Erich Leinsdorf conducting.

That same year, MacWatters joined the voice faculty at Indiana University, beginning a teaching career that ran concurrently with her performing work for twenty-five years. Known to her students as "Miss Mac," she was awarded Indiana University's Frederic Bachman Lieber Memorial Award for excellence in teaching in 1979. She retired in 1982 with the rank of Professor Emeritus but continued to teach privately thereafter. MacWatters died on November 5, 2005, at the age of ninety-three.