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Maine
Music Festivals
The
Maine Music Festival was established in 1897, and thrived for many years
under its founder and director, William Rogers Chapman (1855 - 1935). Over
the years, the Festival has featured many great singers such as Evan
Williams, Mary Garden, Geraldine Farrar, Jeanne Jomelli, Nellie Melba, Emilio De Gogorza, Margaret Matzenauer, Lawrence Tibbett, Emma Eames,
Ernestine Schumann Heink, Hipolito
Lazaro, Amelita Galli Curci, Louis Graveure, and in the first Festival, Lillian Nordica.
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(1) Artists for the
1907 Festival: Amelita Galli Curci, William R. Chapman (Founder), Margaret
Wilson, Percy Grainger, Ethel Frank, Vernon Stiles, Olive Marshall, Duncan
Robertson, and Mary Warfel.
(2) The Maine Music
Festival of 1909 featured Jeanne Jomelli.
(3) All Star Soloists,
1911: Mary Garden, Alma Gluck, Lois Ewell, Lilla Ormond, Lambert Murphy,
Mildred Potter, Ernest J. Hill, Ethelynde S. Smith, and Royal Dadmun.
(4) The Festival of
1910 featured Marie Rappold.
(5) Maine Music
Festivals featuring "Three Great Prima Donnas." This postcard features
Geraldine Farrar, Jeanne Jomelli, Mme. Nash-Stover, Mme. Langendorff, Frederic
Gunster, and Reinald Werrenrath.
(6-7) In 1906, a postcard
of the concert hall in Portland where the Festivals took place. The orchestra,
chorus, conductor, and singers are seen here.
Programs from the Festivals
can be quite interesting for the collector. They have many photographs of the
principal singers along with biographies. Member names of the choir are
listed. You can also find little interesting tidbits such as in the 1918
program, where a full page photo of Ernestine Schumann Heink comes with the
description that the great contralto, "... is now giving her time and her
voice to help 'The Boys Over There.' Her great Mother-heart goes out to all,
as she has four sons in the service."
(8) The program cover
for the first Festival in 1897 with Lillian Nordica.
(9) The 1909 program
featuring Geraldine Farrar and Jeanne Jomelli.
(10) The program for the
Festival of 1915 featuring Nellie Melba and Emilio De Gogorza.
(11) The program for
the 1925 Festival featuring Lawrence Tibbet and Margaret Matzenauer.
(12) Look for programs
that contain autographs of the singers. This particular program (1925)
contains many autographs, including Caterina Gobbi, and a young Lawrence
Tibbett, who had only just made a triumphant appearance at the Metropolitan
Opera that same year, as Ford in Falstaff.
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