Sarame Raynolds

Raynolds sang professionally in Italy^[9] before making her American debut in Los Angeles in 1915, in Aida and I Lombardi alla prima crociata, with the Los Angeles National Grand Opera Company.^[4] Her voice "rang with a brilliance and opulence of tone that completely filled the auditorium", according to the Musical Courier account of her debut.^[10] Also in 1915, she toured with a quartet in the American Southwest,^[11][12] gave a recital at the Panama–California Exposition in San Diego, and drove from Texas to New York with her mother, sister, and cousin.^[13]

Raynolds sang with the Chicago Grand Opera Company in the 1916–1917 season, and was an assisting artist at the Chicago Musical College.^[14] She toured the United States in the leading role of Tosca with the Boston National Grand Opera Company in 1917.^[15] In 1918 she was a soloist with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra,^[16] and returned to Europe with the YMCA, to entertain American troops in World War I.^[1] Ella Holloway Lewis was her manager in the 1910s.^[17]

Raynolds had a home in Florida in 1919.^[18] She married bookseller and World War I veteran Marston Elliott Drake in 1923.^[7] They lived in Plandome, New York,^[6] and had a son, Raynolds Drake, and a daughter, Sarame R. (Sally) Drake. Raynolds died in 1961, at the age of 75. There is a collection of her papers at the New England Conservatory of Music.^[8]