Constance Eberhart

Eberhart was born on a farm in York, Nebraska,^[1] and raised near Pittsburgh, the daughter of Oscar Eberhart^[2] and Nelle Richmond Eberhart. Her mother was a noted librettist.^[3] She studied voice with Oscar Saenger,^[4] Yvonne de Tréville, and others.^[5]

Eberhart was a mezzo-soprano,^[6] and sometimes contralto,^[7] who sang with the Cincinnati Grand Opera Company and the Chicago Civic Opera Company.^[5][8] She also sang with the Papalardo Opera Ensemble in 1924,^[9] and with the Cincinnati Zoo Opera annually, from 1927 to 1932.^{[7][10][11][12]} She made her Chicago opera debut in 1927, in Falstaff.^[3] As a concert singer, she was especially known for singing the works of her mother's collaborator, composer Charles Wakefield Cadman,^[13][14] sometimes in costume.^[15] "She has depth and richness of quality in her low tones," reported the Musical Courier in 1926, "while her high register is brilliant and free."^[4]

In her later years, Eberhart was a voice teacher in Chicago schools,^[16] at a summer arts colony in Arkansas,^[17][18][19] and at a conservatory in Kansas City.^[20][21] She directed the FMC Lyric Opera Workshop as a summer program in Arkansas in the 1950s, and donated a lodge to the program, in her mother's memory.^[19] She was active in the National Opera Association.^[21]

Eberhart died in 1981, at the age of 83. Scrapbooks of memorabilia from her music career are in a collection of her mother's papers at Middlebury College.^[22] In 1983 a biography, Constance Eberhart: A Musical Career in the Age of Cadman was published by the American Opera Association.^[23] The Constance Eberhart Memorial Endowment of the National Opera Association funds scholarship awards for vocal music students.^[24]