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Recording Artist and Willa Cather Prototype

By Doug Boilesen, 2020

Ernestine Schumann-Heink has been identified by scholars (1) as a prototype used by Cather in her opera related story Paul's Case, i.e., the prototype for the "soprano soloist."

Besides starring on the opera stage Schumann-Heink made phonograph records and was featured in advertisements which added her celebrity status, artistic reputation, and the prestige of opera to the promotion of the early phonograph.

This gallery provides examples focused on Schumann-Heink and her popular culture role as seen in advertisements and other ephemera.

 

 

Schumann-Heink Postcard, 1907

 

Everybody's Magazine, 1910

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Life, September 9, 1915

See Phonographia's "Both are" for additional examples of the 1914 - 1916 advertising campaign which wanted to assure consumers that what you were purchasing was "just as truly" the artist as the artist him or herself.

 

Mme. Schumann-Heink and Geraldine Farrar

Farrar and Schumann-Heink, November 10, 1909

Farrar and Eames, the greatest American sopranos, 1911

Farrar and Schumann-Heink, Harper's Magazine, 1908

Mme. Schumann-Heink and Geraldine Farrar

 

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Exclusivity and hosting the world’s greatest artists like Farrar and Schumann-Heink (with Caruso of course here leading the procession) were privileges that came with owning a Victor. Wealth and high social status were obvious and intended parts of these ads. Victrola Christmas Brochure, 1914.

 

Farrar and Schumann-Heink - Masterpieces of opera by the world's greatest artists, "Victor Supremacy" March 1917.

 

 

Schumann-Heink - One of the world's greatest artists! "Victor Supremacy" The Geographic, 1918.

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Mme. Schumann-Heink, Geraldine Farrar and Lucrezia Bori

 

Farrar, Schumann-Heink and Bori, The Ladies' Home Journal, September 1919

Mme. Schumann-Heink and Geraldine Farrar

 

Farrar and Schumann-Heink, the National Geographic 1919

Farrar and Schumann-Heink, The Literary Digest for November 6, 1920

Schumann-Heink as Mary in The Flying Dutchman, The Victrola Book of the Opera (1921), p. 123

Schumann-Heink as Ortrud in Lohengrin, The Victrola Book of the Opera (1921), p. 184

Schumann-Heink as Fidès in Le Prophète, The Victrola Book of the Opera (1921), p. 318

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Mme. Schumann-Heink and Geraldine Farrar

 

Farrar and Schuman-Heink,"The Chosen instrument by the world's greatest artists." The Ladies' Home Journal" November 1918.

1923 Farrar and Schumann-Heink and Homer - "Victor Supremacy"

Mme. Schumann-Heink, Geraldine Farrar, and Mary Garden

 

Farrar, Schumann-Heink, Mary Garden - 1922 sepia rotogravure.

"Madame Schumann-Heink's Sense of Humor," The Saturday Evening Post, October 31, 1903

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Schumann-Heink as “fashion editor” The Ladies’ Home Journal, 1914.

 

New Victor Records October 1920.

 

"Mme. Schumann-Heink has been heard by so many American audiences that unless her Victor Records were indeed her other self the discrepancy would be noted, not by the few but by the many." The Ladies' Home Journal, May 1925.

Visit the Phonographia gallery Willa Cather's Opera Prototypes who were Recording Artists for an overview of Cather's six opera related prototypes: FARRAR, FREMSTAD, NORDICA, GARDEN, SCHUMANN-HEINK and BORI.

 

For biographical notes, pictures, and comments related to Ernestine Schumann-Heink and her recordings, see Andrea’s cantabile - subito, Ernestine Schumann-Heink created by Andrea Suhm-Binder as part of her site for collectors of Great Singers of the Past.