Adelaide Gescheidt

Gescheidt was born in Mount Vernon, New York, the daughter of Albert F. Gescheidt and Mary Steurer Gescheidt.^[1] Her father was a businessman; all her grandparents were born in Germany.

Gescheidt was a concert and church soprano in the early 20th century.^[2] She studied singing with John Dennis Mehan^[3] and Bruno Huhn.^[4] The composer and pianist Edith Haines Kuester was her piano teacher and vocal coach.^[5] In 1907-1908 she was the paid resident soprano soloist at Willis Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in the Bronx.^[6] In 1910 she performed Haines Kuester's song cycle In Helena's Garden (words by Richard Watson Gilder) in a concert performed at Crouse College during the convention of the New York State Music Teachers Association with the composer as her accompanist.^[7]

Gescheidt injured her neck in a fall, ending her performing career.^[8] After that, she was a vocal coach who worked with opera and concert singers from her studio at Carnegie Hall.^[9][10] Her specialty, advertised as "Miller Vocal Art-Science",^[11][12] involved training and rehabilitating speaking and singing voices damaged by injury, illness, or other defects,^[13] in collaboration with throat specialist Frank E. Miller.^[1] She wrote about her work in a pamphlet^[14] that later became a book, Make Singing a Joy (1930, with a foreword by musicologist Sigmund Spaeth).^[8] She emphasized that singing naturally, without excessive training or force, produces a pleasing sound and preserves the voice from strain.^[15][16] Her notable students included actress Betty Blythe^[17] and oratorio singer Richard Crooks.^[18]

Gescheidt was active in the National Federation of Music Clubs, especially on a committee to promote quality music in film scores.^[1][19]

Gescheidt died in a hospital in New York City in 1946, at the age of 69.^[1]