Emma Eames (August 13, 1865 - June 13, 1952) was an American soprano. She sang lyric and lyric-dramatic roles in opera and had an important career in New York, London and Paris during the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century.
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The daughter of an international lawyer, Eames was born in Shanghai, China and raised in Portland and Bath in the American state of Maine. (Her surname, incidentally, was pronounced "Ames" not "Eemes".) The promising quality of her voice was recognised early by her mother and she received singing lessons as a little girl. She attended school in Boston where she studied singing with Charles R. Adams. Later, she took voice lessons in Paris with the highly successful but autocratic teacher Mathilde Marchesi. It was noted in the press at the time of Marchesi's death in 1913 that Eames had praised the tuition she received from that teacher.[1] Subsequently, however, she would downplay Marchesi's influence on her vocal technique.
Eames made her professional operatic debut in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at the Paris Opéra in 1889. She would perform the role of Juliette many other times during the next two years, while adding other French-opera parts to her repertoire. As early as November 1889 The Times called her "the favourite cantatrice of the Opera"[2]. She left the company in 1891, however, for personal reasons. (She sang again in Paris in 1904, in a benefit performance of Puccini's Tosca at La Salle Favart.)
In late 1891, she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, also as Juliette. She performed regularly at The Met, in a variety of operas until 1909, when a dispute with management precipitated her departure. Eames also made appearances at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She sang intermittently in London from 1891 to 1901 and became regarded as a rival to Covent Garden's reigning diva, Nellie Melba. She also sang in Madrid and at the Monte Carlo Opera during the 1890s.
Eames gave her farewell operatic performances with the Boston opera company in the 1911-12 season and undertook concert tours of the United States. She appeared on the recital platform for the last time in 1916, by which time her voice was showing signs of deterioration. Her autobiography, Some Memories and Reflections, was published in 1927.
Eames' press notices included the following examples:
Paris Opera House:
Saint-Saëns' Ascanio, 1890: ""Mon coeur est sous la pierre", of Colombe... sung with exquisite taste and without accompaniment... a delightful Colombe... consummate art... evoking unanimous plaudits". [3]
Covent Garden:
Gounod's Faust, April 7, 1891: "debut... immediate and very great success... middle notes of the voice, which have a peculiarly beautiful quality... approaching the timbre of the mezzo-soprano... the organ as a whole, though exceedingly sweet, is not very powerful, but the singer's method leaves nothing to desire, and her execution of brilliant passages is neat and accurate... [and although] no very striking amount of tragic power... charming and sincerely artistic". [4]
Wagner's Lohengrin, April 11, 1891: "[as Elsa] a good deal of success... very great charm of her voice". [4] Indeed, Hatton [5] was to claim in 1931 that "The supreme personality is the one who can monopolise a part without any change ever being called for or desired -- such as ... Emma Eames as Elsa".
Massenet's Werther, 1894: "Mme. Emma Eames sings and acts most charmingly as Charlotte... the beautiful quality of the singer's lower notes.. her performance was entirely successful".[6]
During her prime, Eames possessed an opulently beautiful, aristocratic and expertly-trained soprano voice. It began as a purely lyric instrument but increased in size over time, enabling her to sing parts as heavy as Aida, Sieglinde, Santuzza and Tosca in large auditoriums. Music critics occasionally took her to task, however, for the coldness of her interpretations and aloof stage manner.
Eames was reportedly unhappy with the way that she sounded on the series of commercial recordings she made prior to World War I for the Victor Talking Machine Company. In 1939, however, she appeared on a radio broadcast and selected some of her better recordings to play to listeners, speaking with little modesty about them. Eames' voice also was captured live at the Met in 1903 on primitive recordings known as the Mapleson Cylinders. She sings (impressively) fragments of Tosca on the cylinders. They can be heard on CD reissues, as can all the gramophone records which she cut for Victor in 1905-11 (Romophone CD 81001-2).
In addition to Tosca and Romeo et Juliette, her repertoire featured a comparatively small but stylistically diverse group of operas, ranging from works by Mozart through Verdi and Wagner to Mascagni. They included, among others, Aida, Otello, Il trovatore, Un ballo in maschera, Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger, Die Walküre, Faust, Werther, Cavalleria rusticana, The Magic Flute, Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni.
Eames was a handsome-looking woman who grew stout with age. She married twice, first to a painter, Julian Story, and then to the famous concert baritone Emilio de Gogorza, with whom she made some records of duets. Both marriages ended in divorce and bitterness. She had no children, but in her autobiography admitted that she was pressured at one stage into undergoing a certain "medical procedure".
Paris was Eames' main place of residence during the 1920s and early '30s. She moved to New York City in 1936, where she gave vocal tuition. She became fond, too, of attending Broadway shows. Eames died in 1952, after a protracted illness, aged 86. She is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Bath, Maine. Her niece, Clare Eames, was the first wife of the noted playwright and screenwriter Sidney Howard.
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