Ernestine Schumann-Heink

Ernestine Schumann-Heink was an Austrian contralto and mezzo-soprano, later a naturalized American citizen, who studied with G. B. Lamperti the younger and made her opera debut at Dresden as Azucena in 1878. She sang at Hamburg under Pollini until 1897, and after four consecutive Covent Garden seasons and a long association with Bayreuth from 1896 to 1914, became a regular at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1909 she returned to Dresden to create Klytemnestra in the premiere of Elektra, a work she privately dismissed as 'a fearful din'. Her American concert tours made her a national institution, and she bade the Metropolitan farewell as Erda in 1932, still captivating audiences into her seventies.