Marie Sundelius
Marie Sundelius was born in Sweden in 1883 and came to the USA with her family when she was nine. They settled in Boston, where she began singing oratorio and concerts in 1910. Ms. Sundeilus came to New York City in 1915 to sing in a concert with The Oratorio Society of New York. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, then general manager of The Metropolitan Opera, attended that performance, and he promptly offered the soprano a contract. She made her Met debut in 1916, going on to sing nearly 250 performances with the Company in New York and on tour over the ensuing ten seasons.
Ms. Sundelius's Met repertory ranged from smaller roles like the Celestial Voice (DON CARLO), the Priestess (AIDA), and Helmwige (WALKURE) to parts like Micaela, Marguerite, Musetta, Nedda, Anna in Catalani's LORELEY, the voice of the Cockeral in COQ D'OR, Strauss's Sophie, and the soprano soloist in the Verdi REQUIEM.
Following her years at The Met, Ms. Sundelius appeared with the Royal Swedish Opera for two seasons. She made concert and recital tours of Europe, and sang with the civic opera companies of Philadelphia and Chicago up until 1930.
After her retirement from singing, the soprano joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory. Her pupils included helden-tenor Jean Cox, the beloved mezzo-soprano Mildred Miller, and Coretta Scott, who became the wife of Martin Luther King.
Marie Sundelius died in Boston in 1958 at the age of 74. She left behind some recordings, most of which are unavailable now. You can listen to her voice in Musetta's Waltz, and in the final minutes of the BUTTERFLY Love Duet, with tenor Giulio Crimi.
Karel Berman
A recent recital of songs by composers banned (or killed) during the years of the Third Reich prompted me to go in search of the stories behind some of the works performed at Weill Hall that evening. Perhaps the most interesting of these is that of a song cycle by Pavel Haas, a Czech-Jewish composer, who was imprisoned at Theresienstadt in 1938. While there, Haas wrote at least eight compositions; one work that survived was a set of Four Songs on Chinese Poetry for baritone and piano, which was first performed inside the fortress-ghetto July 11th, 1944, by another inmate, the singer Karel Berman.
Soon after that performance, both the composer and the singer were sent on to Auschwitz, where Haas was executed. Incredibly, Karel Berman survived the horror of the concentration camp. He returned to Prague where he became a very successful opera singer at the Prague National Theatre. He made several recordings for Czech-based labels, including two versions of the Haas cycle (excerpt below):
Karel Berman - Zaslech jsem divoké husy ~ by Pavel Haas
Berman was also featured in recordings of several of his operatic roles, among them Leporello...
Karel Berman - Madamina! Il catalogo e questo ~ DON GIOVANNI
...and Alberich (with Antonín Švorc as The Wanderer):
Karel Berman & Antonín Švorc - scene from SIEGFRIED - Act II
Karel Berman also directed over 70 opera productions at Prague, and from the 1960s taught at the Prague Conservatory and also at that city's Academy of the Performing Arts. He passed away in 1995.
Margaret Roggero, mezzo-soprano, was born in New York City in 1918. She taught herself to sing as a young girl, earned a degree in Romance languages from Hunter College, and studied at Juilliard on scholarship while supporting herself as a secretary with a Wall Street firm.
In 1950, while she was understudying the role of the Secretary in Gian Carlo Menotti's THE CONSUL, Ms. Roggero was offered an audition at the Metropolitan Opera, resulting in her debut there as Annina in DER ROSENKAVALIER in 1950. She went on to sing nearly 600 performances with The Met in New York and on tour. Her vast repertory included Maddalena in RIGOLETTO, Cherubino, Nicklausse, Margret in WOZZECK, La Cieca in GIOCONDA, Siebel, Wagner's 2nd Norn, and Suzuki (her most frequent role - performed on 65 occasions - opposite such immortal Butterflys as Renata Tebaldi, Dorothy Kirsten, and Licia Albanese).
Margaret Roggero joined San Francisco Opera in 1952, where she sang several roles over four seasons. She bade farewell to opera at The Met in 1963, and worked as an executive secretary before relocating to South Florida in 1983; there, she volunteered at a Fort Lauderdale hospital.
Margaret Roggero passed away at Deerfield Park, Florida, in 2011 at the age of 93.
Margaret Roggero - Premiers transports from Berlioz ROMEO & JULIETTE
Of Russian tenor Georgii Nelepp (1904-1957), little is known with regard to his early life and training. His parents died while he was still a boy. He worked as a farmhand before joining the Red Army. Nelepp had no formal musical education, he nevertheless learned to play the violin and the harmonica...and how to sing.
In 1927, he auditioned for Leningrad Conservatory, winning one of seven openings there. Upon completing his studies, Nelepp was offered a contract at Leningrad's prestigious Kirov Theater. He debuted there, as Lensky in Tchaikovsky's EUGENE ONEGIN, to great acclaim. In the years to come, Nelepp would champion composers of Soviet operas. Throughout his adult life, Nelepp belonged to the Communist Party; he enjoyed the privileges of Party membership, such as owning a car in which he took family and friends on fishing trips.
Nelepp was a versatile singer; his repertory included Dmitry in BORIS GODUNOV, the title-role in SADKO, Gherman in PIQUE-DAME, Radames, Florestan, Don Jose, Walther von Stoltzing, and Eleazar in LA JUIVE.
In 1944, Nelepp left the Kirov to join the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, where he performed until his death from heart disease in 1957 at the age of 53.
Georgii Nelepp had a repertory of more than fifty roles; here are some samplings of his singing:
Georgii Nelepp - aria from Tchaikovsky's THE ENCHANTRESS
Georgii Nelepp - Rachel quand du Seigneur ~ LA JUIVE
Georgii Nelepp - Prize Song ~ MEISTERSINGER (sung in Russian)
Georgii Nelepp - SADKO ~ aria
Soprano Shakeh Vartenissian is variously referred to as Turkish, Armenian, Syrian, or Lebanese. She was born in 1924 and passed away n 2003.
Ms. Vartenissian made her Met debut in 1954 as Poussette in MANON; over the next twoiyears, she sang 38 performances with The Met; her additional roles were the Celestial Voice in DON CARLO, the Priestess in AIDA, and a Noble Orphan in ROSENKAVALIER.
Her career apparently continued in Europe, though it is difficult to pin down exact dates, places, and repertory. There was an undated video clip of her as Donna Elvira, seemingly at Aix-en-Provence, that has now been deleted from YouTube. And I found a reference to her singing Elvira in ERNANI at the Wexford Festival in 1961, opposite Ragnar Ulfung (!) in the title-role. There is also mention of her singing Lady Macbeth at the Spoleto Festival.
One confirmed engagement was as Maddalena in ANDREA CHENIER at Chicago in 1961, where her Chenier was Jon Vickers, and her Gerard was Mario Zanasi. I seem to recall a tape of this performance circulating back in the day when I was trading in reel-to-reel.
In 1959, Shaken Vartenissian recorded the Verdi REQUIEM under the baton of Tullio Serafin; her colleagues were Fiorenza Cossotto, Eugenio Fernandi, and Boris Christoff. Ms. Vartenissian was reportedly replacing Antonietta Stella for this recording; it was on YouTube for a while, but now seems to have vanished.
Ms. Vartenissian passed away in 2003. It's rather sad that her career has been so poorly documented
~ Oberon