Helen Francesca Traubel was an American opera and concert singer.
14 Facts About Helen Traubel
2.
Helen Traubel was born in St Louis, Missouri to a prosperous family of German descent.
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Helen Traubel was the daughter of Otto Ferdinand Traubel, a pharmacist, and Clara Traubel.
4.
Helen Traubel studied singing in her native city with Louise Vetta-Karst and later in New York City with Giuseppe Boghetti among other teachers.
5.
Helen Traubel made her debut as a concert singer with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1923, and in 1926 she received an offer to join the Metropolitan Opera company after performing the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Lewisohn Stadium under conductor Rudolph Ganz.
6.
Helen Traubel turned down the Met's offer in order to continue with her studies and career as a concert singer.
7.
On May 12,1937, Helen Traubel made her debut appearance on the opera stage, after composer Walter Damrosch asked her to sing the role of Mary Rutledge in the world premiere of his opera The Man Without a Country at the Metropolitan Opera.
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Helen Traubel made her debut with the Chicago City Opera Company later that year, appearing there until the company went bankrupt in 1939.
9.
Helen Traubel made her debut with the San Francisco Opera as Brunnhilde in Die Walkure on October 9,1945 with Lauritz Melchior as Siegmund, Margaret Harshaw as Fricka, and William Steinberg conducting; she made several further appearances there during 1945 and 1947.
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Helen Traubel later triumphed in Tannhauser and in Tristan und Isolde.
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Helen Traubel was renowned for her powerful voice, which was often described as a "gleaming sword"; her endurance and purity of tone were unsurpassed, especially as Brunnhilde and Isolde.
12.
Helen Traubel went on to appear at the Copacabana, as well as in many cameo television roles.
13.
Helen Traubel appeared opposite Groucho Marx as Katisha in a Bell Telephone presentation in an abridged performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
14.
Helen Traubel wrote two murder mysteries, The Ptomaine Canary in 1950 and The Metropolitan Opera Murders, which feature a soprano heroine, Elsa Vaughan, who helps solve the mystery, as well as being a thinly-disguised portrait of Traubel herself.