(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 in a staged opera. 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).

Postcards in this Tivoli Opera House series were published in 1903 by Almagia, Patrizi & Company in San Francisco. The two postcards at the right of the destroyed opera house are not part of this series.

(21) Giuseppe Agostini, Lyric Tenor.

(22) Destruction of San Francisco by Fire, April 18, 1906. Tivoli Opera House. Eddy & Mason Streets.

(23) Destruction of San Francisco by Fire, April 18, 1906. Tivoli Opera House.

(24) Alfredo Tedeschi, Light tenor. The sender writes, "Will improve with Force, 10/21/03."

(25) Baldo Travaglini, Bass. 10/21/1903.