Ernestine Schumann-Heink

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Ernestine Schumann-Heink (born Ernestine Amalie Pauline Rössler on June 15, 1861) was a Bohemian-born American opera singer with a dramatic contralto voice. She came from a German-speaking family in Libeň, Bohemia (now part of Prague) and later built a famous career in Europe and the United States.

Her early life was peripatetic. Her father, Hans Rössler, was a shoe maker and former Austrian cavalryman; her mother, Charlotte Goldman, was Jewish. The family lived in Verona, Prague, Kraków, and Graz, where Ernestine began voice lessons. She gave her first professional performance at age 15 in Graz and made her operatic debut in 1878 at the Dresden Royal Opera House, where she sang Azucena in Il Trovatore and quickly became a leading contralto.

Ernestine married three times. Her first husband was Johann Georg Ernst Albert Heink; they had four children. After their divorce, she married Curt Paul Schumann and had three more children. Her third marriage was to William Rapp Jr.; they separated in 1911 and divorced in 1915. She also had a stepson and other children through these marriages.

Her career flourished across Europe and the United States. She performed with Gustav Mahler in Hamburg and later became closely associated with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she first sang in 1899 and remained a favorite until 1932. She began recording songs in 1900 and made many gramophone records.

Ernestine became an American citizen in the early 1900s. During World War I, she supported the United States by entertaining troops and helping war charities. In 1909 she created the role of Klytaemnestra in Richard Strauss’s Elektra. She also helped popularize the Christmas song Stille Nacht (Silent Night) on U.S. radio from 1926 to 1935.

After the 1929 stock market crash, she continued singing to support herself. Her last performance at the Met was in 1932, at age 71. She died of leukemia on November 17, 1936, in Hollywood, California, at the age of 75. Her funeral was conducted by the American Legion, and she was buried in San Diego. Her archive was donated to the Smithsonian Institution, and a bronze tablet honoring her was unveiled in Balboa Park, San Diego, in 1938.