Emma Abbott
Emma Abbott ( born December 9, 1850 in Chicago, Illinois; † 5 January 1891 in Salt Lake City ) was an American opera singer with soprano vocal range.
Life
Emma Abbott was born into a poor, originally settled in New England family of musicians. My paternal grandfather, Dyer Abbott, was a guest house owner and director of a church choir in Boscawen, New Hampshire. Her parents, the singing teacher and violinist Seth Abbott and his wife Almira Palmer, lived in different cities of Illinois, as in Chicago, where Emma, who also had several siblings, was born. 1854 Emma's family settled down in Peoria, where her father was able to win but only a few music students.
Seth Abbott already promoted the singing talent of his daughter Emma when she was still a child. Her first appearance as a singer and guitar player gave the girl was nine years old in Peoria. You made henceforth by together with her father and her brother George also musical concerts organized local action to alleviate the financial difficulties her family. 1866 Emma toured with the Lombard Concert Company by several U.S. states and completed after the dissolution of this group performances in hotels, including New York.
With a given in Toledo ( Ohio) from their 1867 musical performance Emma Abbott was fascinated by the famous singer Clara Louise Kellogg, whereupon she could get lessons from the 1870 coming from Italy opera singer Achille Errani in New York with their support. In this city they were on December 12, 1871 their concert debut. To prepare for a career in opera, she went to Europe in 1872, where he was in Milan student of the famous singing teacher Antonio Sangiovanni, then in Paris pupil of the German mezzo-soprano Mathilde Marchesi, the French tenor Pierre -François Wartel and the Italian baritone Enrico Delle sedation.
A childless marriage was Abbott running - which retained their Christian names anyway - secretly in 1875 with the New York pharmacist Eugene Wetherell one. Her first opera appearance was on 2 May 1876 at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London as Marie in Donizetti Gaetano La Fille du Régiment. In the autumn of 1876 she returned with her husband to the United States, where they remained all his life now. Here in her home country she made her operatic debut on February 23, 1877 in New York, where they like in London sang the role of Marie in La Fille du Régiment. In 1878 she founded the Emma Abbott English Opera Company and toured with this until her premature end of life by the United States, where she became well known in their time. As the manager of the opera company, her husband took care of all about business-related issues, while she was artistic director and in this role as costly costumes of great French couturiers ordered and conductors chose.
As Prima Donna her company Abbott entered into elaborately staged operas, so among other things as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod, and also as Marguerite in Faust the same French composer, in the title role of the romantic - comic opera Martha by German composer Friedrich von Flotow and Virginia than in Paul and Virginie by Victor Massé. Initially trained pious restraint in its performances they put on later part. So was her passionate " Abbott kiss" famous and they also sang Violetta in La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi - a role it during their stay in Europe because of the alleged immorality of the opera did not want to play - now of course in a the moral standards of their audience more tailored shape.
Many music critics took umbrage that Abbott, who had a pure soprano voice of great flexibility and a considerable extent, often aufführte operas in a shortened length, the scores abwandelte arbitrary and popular songs such as Nearer, My God, to Thee in the version of Lowell Mason lodged in it. They also had French and Italian operas always present in English translation. Despite the negative attitude of the music critic Abbott stayed with her winning being the simpler American audiences in vogue, was quite wealthy, with assets of about almost one million dollars and contributed significantly to the popularization of English folk opera performances in the United States.
1889 Emma Abbott was a widow and took over the responsibilities of her various husbands. While an opera tour, she retired in December 1890 in an unheated locker room in Ogden (Utah ) to a cold that led to pneumonia, she died unexpectedly at the beginning of 1891 in Salt Lake City at the age of just 40 years. Your urn was buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery in Gloucester ( Massachusetts). Your assets they left behind, among other things foundling hospitals and several churches. A biography wrote her close friend Sadie E. Martin ( The Life and Professional Career of Emma Abbott, 1891).