Maria Jeritza

Maria Jeritza (6 October 1887 – 10 July 1982) was an Austrian-born American soprano. She was described by John Rockwell in The New York Times as a spinto soprano who was "the golden girl of opera's golden age". She enjoyed "mass adulation" from the public from the 1910s into the 1930s in what today could only be compared to that of a major rock or pop star. While she appeared at many theaters globally as a guest artist, her career was chiefly based in Vienna and New York City. She had a long association with the Vienna State Opera (1912–1935 and 1950–1953) and the Metropolitan Opera ("Met", 1921–1932 and 1951). She performed more than 60 roles during her career; 20 of which were sung at the Met. She is remembered today for originating roles in several notable operas; among them Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten by Richard Strauss and Die tote Stadt by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. She was also the first singer to perform the title roles of Giacomo Puccini's Turandot and Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa in the United States. Born with the name Marie Jedličková in what is today Moravia, she changed her name to Maria Jeritza in her early twenties. She began her career as a chorus girl at the Brno City Theatre in 1904, and performed her first leading role at the opera house in Olmütz in 1906. She subsequently performed at Theater Dortmund, the Munich Art Theatre, and the Vienna Volksoper before landing at the opera house of Bad Ischl where her performance captivated Franz Joseph I of Austria. At the emperor's insistence she was given a contract with the Vienna State Opera (VS0) in 1912 where her rapid rise to fame earned her the moniker "The Moravian Thunderbolt". She first came to New York's Met in 1921 where she was paid with a salary on par with Enrico Caruso and enjoyed a mass celebrity in the United States. Her love life and personal affairs were routinely followed in the press, as were reported feuds with rival singers and co-stars like tenors Alfred Piccaver and Beniamino Gigli, soprano Lotte Lehmann and mezzo Maria Olszewska. She married four times; including twice to Americans. Her third husband was the Fox Film Corporation mogul Winfield Sheehan. She became a naturalized American citizen and in her later life she lived in New Jersey where she died at the age of 94.

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