Stars of Le Prophète

Stars of Le Prophète

Ernestine Schumann-Heink
Born: Austria, June 15, 1861
Died November 17, 1936, Hollywood Caifornia
(buried Greenwood Memorial Park, San Diego, CA)

Role: Fidès

Ernestine Schumann-Heink was born in Austria. She made her debut in Dresden as Azucena in 1878. She sang at the Met, starting in the 1898-99 season, and continued there for five seasons.

Thereafter, she performed all over the U.S., and performed for the troops during World War I. She won the hearts of the masses with her rich, warm voice, singing songs they liked to hear. The great contralto gave her final performance at the Met in 1932 at the age of seventy, bringing to a close a career that spanned 54 years.

In 1906 Schumann-Heink purchased a 78-acre estate, consisting of farm and woodland, on Caldwell Mountain, near Montclair, New Jersey, to be her principal American home. She called her two-story, stick-style home Villa Fides, after the forgiving mother in Meyerbeer's opera Le Prophete. Besides her husband, children and a staff of seven employees, she kept over 200 hens, six horses, five dogs, two pigs, a donkey, a pony, and a pair of Austrian doves.

Gustave Roger
Born: 1815
Died: 1879

Role: Jean de Leyden

Pauline Viardot

Born: 1821
Died: 1910

Role: Fidès