The postcards
above were used to advertise products, in this case, Edison and Victor
phonographs and discs, and the Opera Stars Lozenges Company. The Lozenges
postcards are categorized as "midget" postcards. They are considerably smaller
than the standard postcard of early 1900s.
(1)
Anna Case:
French-trained Finnish soprano (1876-1944). After a series of hits
and misses that failed to establish her talents, she finally achieved
stardom in the title role of Strauss's Salome, (seen here) which was
for a time the definitive interpretation.
(2) Julia Heinrich
(AL: 1880? - Hammond LA: 18 Sep 1919). American soprano and vocal
instructor. Julia was the daughter of German baritone, Max Heinrich. She
appeared in Montreal, Elberfeld, Hamburg (1913-15), and then making her
Metropolitan Opera debut as Gutrune in Götterdämmerung
(1915). She sang several small roles at the Met. In 1919 she was asked to
make vocal comparison tests, matching her live voice against her Edison
recordings. She was killed at a train station in Louisiana by a locomotive,
while her accompanist, Lucille Colette, who was standing nearby, was spared.
Her Edison discs were reportedly recorded under the name of Julia Henry, but
this cannot be verified.
(3) Arthur Middleton
(? - Chicago: 16 Feb 1929), American concert baritone. He made his
Metropolitan Opera debut (18 Nov 1914) as the Herald in Lohengrin.
(4) Marie Rappold,
American soprano. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut (22 Nov 1905) as
Sulamith in Goldmark's Königin
von Saba. She was married to tenor
Rudolf Berger.
(5) Belgian coloratura soprano Alice
Verlet (1873-1934) She made her Paris Opéra debut in 1903 as Blondine in
L'Enlèvement au Sérail. Her great virtuosity brought her success in
the roles of Philine, Rosina, Violetta, and Lakmé. In 1915 at the Chicago
Opera she was seen as Philine in several performances of Mignon,
which featured Conchita Supervia, Charles Dalmorès, and Marcel Journet in
the cast.
(6)
American contralto Louise Homer
(1871-1947) as a seldom photographed Azucena in Il Trovatore. After a
period of vocal study in Europe her initial performances were met with
lukewarm reviews. Her voice was described as loud and hard with little
temperament. However, with the test of time she went on to make a number of
successful recordings. The Metropolitan Opera, appreciating (or taking
advantage of) her vocal diversity, contracted her for twenty-two seasons. In
that period she sang over forty-two roles in 700-plus appearances. A Dupont
image.
(7) Olive Kline (NY
State: 1885? - Lake George, NY: 29 Jul 1976). American soprano. Like Emilio
de Gogorza, she never appeared on the operatic stage. She was a concert
singer, mostly engaged for oratorios. She was hired by the Victor Company in
1912, and recorded discs for them into the 1930s. She did record operatic
arias. She recorded many discs under the name of Alice Green.
(8) Irish tenor John McCormack
(1884-1945) was inspired to sing after witnessing a performance of La
Bohème at Covent Garden with Caruso. Under the name Giovanni Foli, he
made his opera debut (1906) in the title role of L'amico Fritz.
(9) Connecticut native Rosa Ponselle
(1897-1981) made her brilliant operatic debut at the Metropolitan Opera as
Leonora (15 Nov 1918) in La Forza del Destino, in the first
performance of that work there. She was considered one of the finest
dramatic sopranos ever. Henry Krehbiel of The New York Tribune wrote,
". . . she possesses a voice of natural beauty that may prove a gold mine;
it is vocal gold, anyhow, with its luscious lower and middle tones, dark,
rich. . . . Brilliant and flexible in the upper register."
(10) Italian baritone Titta Ruffo (1877-1953)
made his debut (1898) at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome as the Herold in
Lohengrin. At Covent Garden as the Duke in Rigoletto (1903) he was
abruptly dismissed after his Gilda, Nellie Melba, proclaimed him "too young"
to be her father (she was sixteen years his senior). His American career began
in Chicago in 1912, where he was a regular visitor until 1926. His
Metropolitan debut (1922) as Rossini's Figaro was greeted with "tremendous
applause and cheers" when he stepped on stage to sing Largo al factotum.
(11) Sophie Braslau
(? - NY: 22 Dec 1935) made her operatic debut at the Metropolitan Opera as
the off-stage voice in Parsifal (27 Nov 1913). A contralto, she
continued to appear at the Met in a number of small roles. She also had a
considerable concert career.
(12) Emilio de Gogorza, concert baritone
(Brooklyn: 29 May 1874 - NY: 10 May 1949). He made his debut (1897) in a
concert with Marcella Sembrich. He never appeared on the operatic stage
reportedly because he was extremely nearsighted. He was an prolific recording
artist, under various professional names, including, E. Francisco, Carlos
Francisco, Eldridge R. Johnson, Edward Franklin, M. Fernand, and Herbert
Goddard. He used his real name with Victor only. In 1911 he married Emma Eames.
After 1930 he devoted most of his time teaching. One of his pupils was John
Brownlee.
(13) Italian coloratura soprano
Amelita Galli-Curci (1882-1963) as Violetta in La Traviata. She
became world famous nearly overnight with her technically sensational singing.
She gave up her career in 1936 after a larynx operation. A Victor Georg
photograph.
(14) Alma Gluck
(Bucharest: 11 May 1884 - NY: 27 Oct 1938). American soprano of Romanian
birth. Debut (1909) at the Metropolitan Opera as Sophie in Werther. She
sang for three seasons at the Met before devoting most of the rest of her
career to the concert stage. She studied with, among others, Marcella Sembrich.
(15) Bohemian, later American, contralto
Ernestine Schumann-Heink (1861-1936). Her concert debut took place
in Graz at the age of fifteen in a performance of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony. Only two years later she made her operatic debut as Azucena
(Il Trovatore) at the Dresden Royal Opera. In 1926, to commemorate the
fiftieth anniversary of her singing debut in Graz, she performed to a packed
house at Carnegie Hall.
(16)
Frances
Alda: New
Zealand (raised in
Australia) soprano (1879-1952). She was a Marchesi pupil. She made her
debut (1904) as Manon at the Opéra-Comique where she was called a "delicious
twenty-two year old Australian." She was invited to the Metropolitan Opera in
1908 by the conductor, Arturo Toscanini. She met Toscanini at La Scala during
her debut there in the Milan premiere of Charpentier's Louise. She
remained at the Metropolitan for twenty-two seasons. A testament to her
intelligence, she learned the standard repertory as well as roles in operas
seldom heard today, such as Giordano's La Cena delle Beffe, Hadley's
Cleopatra's Night, Catalani's Loreley, Herbert's Madeleine
and Rabaud's Marouf. It has been said that her long career at the
Metropolitan can be attributed, in part, to her marriage to the general
manager of that house, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, whom she met in Milan. After
twenty-two years of marriage she divorced Gatti-Casazza and subsequently
devoted several years to the concert stage.
(17) Rudolf Berger: Czech tenor
(1874-1915): Originally a baritone he changed to tenor after studying with
Oscar Saenger in New York. He made his American debut (4 Feb 1914) at the
Metropolitan Opera. He was married to soprano Marie Rappold.
(18) Louise Cox.
(19) Edoardo Ferrari-Fontana, Italian
tenor (Rome: 8 Jul 1878 - Toronto, Canada: 4 Jul 1936). He was a diplomat
before taking up a singing career. Basically self-taught, he started off on
the concert stage. In 1908 he started singing operetta, and then in 1910 he
sang a highly successful Tristan at the Teatro Regio in Turin. After that he
was principally considered a Wagnerian tenor. He was married, for a time, to
contralto Marguerite Matzenauer. He sang all over the world and then settled
in Toronto to teach.
(20) Latvian tenor Karl Jorn
(1873-1947). He made his debut (1896) at Freiburg as Lionel in Martha.
He was an esteemed singer in Berlin, but even Kaiser Wilhelm II could not keep
him from sailing to the United States where he eventually became a citizen. He
was a member of the Metropolitan Opera for six seasons (1908-1914).
