Ernestine Schumann-Heink - International Career

International Career

She performed with Gustav Mahler at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, and became well known for her performances of the works of Richard Wagner at Bayreuth, singing at the Bayreuth Festivals from 1896 to 1914.

She first sang at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1898, and performed with the Met regularly thereafter for decades.

Schumann-Heink made the first of her many phonograph (gramophone) recordings in 1900. Many of them have been reissued on CD and continue to impress due to the quality of her rich voice and the excellence of her technique.

In 1905, she married William Rapp, Jr., her manager. They divorced in 1915.

In the midst of a legal battle in Germany over her late husband's estate, she filed U.S. naturalization papers on February 10, 1905, which became final on March 3, 1908. She and her new husband lived on Grandview Avenue, North Caldwell, Essex County, New Jersey in her "Villa Fides" from April 1906 to December 1911; she then moved to 500 acres (2 km²) of farm land located just outside of San Diego, California (in an area known as Helix Hill in Grossmont), purchased by her in January 1910, where she would live for most of her life. Her residence there still stands.

In 1909, she created the role of Klytaemnestra in the debut of Richard Strauss's Elektra, of which she said she had no high opinion, calling it 'a fearful din'. Strauss, for his part, was not entirely taken by Schumann-Heink; according to one story, during rehearsals he told the orchestra "Louder! I can still hear Mme. Schumann-Heink!".

In 1915, she appeared as herself in the early documentary film Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco, which was directed and starred by Fatty Arbuckle.