Maxine Stellman
American opera soprano (1906–1972)
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Maxine Elliot Stellman Caruso (May 13, 1906 – June 24, 1972) was an American opera singer, a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera in the 1930s and 1940s.
May 13, 1906
Maxine Stellman | |
|---|---|
Maxine Stellman, from a 1936 newspaper | |
| Born | Maxine Elliot Stellman May 13, 1906 |
| Died | June 24, 1972 (aged 66) Brattleboro, Vermont |
| Other names | Maxine Stellman Caruso |
| Occupation | Opera singer |
Early life and education
Stellman was from Brattleboro, Vermont,[1] the daughter of Wilhelm Elliot Stellman and Lillian Lucinda Miller Stellman. Her father was a machine manufacturer.[2] She graduated from Juilliard in 1934.[3] She stayed at Juilliard for graduate studies with Belle Julie Soudant,[4] Marcella Sembrich[5] and Florence Page Kimball.[6]
Career
Stellman was a featured soloist with the Chautauqua Institution's symphony orchestra as a young woman.[7] She was the female winner of the 1937 Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air, a talent contest program which awarded a cash prize and a singing role in a spring production.[6]
Stellman's appearances with the Metropolitan Opera included soprano roles in Orfeo ed Euridice (1936),[8] The Man Without a Country (1937), Aïda (1938),[9] Madama Butterfly (1940),[10] Die Walküre (1940),[11] Il Trovatore and The Marriage of Figaro (1941),[12] Manon (1942),[13] Lohengrin (1942),[14] Louise (1943),[15] Tannhäuser (1943),[16] Carmen (1943),[17] La Traviata (1943),[18] The Magic Flute (1945),[19] Rigoletto (1945),[20] Der Rosenkavalier (1945),[21] Lakmé (1946),[22] Faust (1947),[23] Hansel and Gretel (1947),[24] and Lucia di Lammermoor (1950).[25] She also toured with Met productions,[26] and was regularly heard in the Metropolitan Opera's radio broadcasts in the 1940s.[27] She made national headlines when she was called in to sing "Elsa" in Lohengrin in Boston in 1942, a role she had never performed before, when Astrid Varnay fell ill.[28][29][30]
Personal life
In 1933, Maxine Stellman married fellow opera singer Joseph W. Caruso, a Sicilian-born tenor with the Metropolitan Opera. The Carusos owned the William Harris House in Brattleboro, one of the oldest buildings in Vermont.[31] She died in 1972, at the age of 66.[32]
