JOHANNA EMILIA AGNES GADSKI (ANKLAM, PRUSSIA, 15 JUNE, 1872 – BERLIN, GERMANY, 22 FEBRUARY 1932)
She was blessed with a secure, powerful, ringing voice, fine musicianship and an excellent technique. These attributes enabled her to enjoy a top-flight career in New York City and London, performing heavy dramatic roles in the German and Italian repertoires. She was born in Anklam, Prussia, on 15 June 1872, according to most references, but birth records still extant at the Evangelical Church of Saint Mary, Anklam, Germany, state that Johanna Wilhelmine Agnes Emilie Gadski was born on June 15, in 1870. After receiving a musical education in Stettin, she made her operatic debut in Berlin in 1889 in the title role of Tchaikovsky’s Undina. Her studies in singing were principally with Mme. Schroeder-Chaloupha. When she was ten years old she sang successfully in concert at Stettin. Her operatic début was made in Berlin, in 1889, in Weber’s Der Freischütz. She then appeared in the opera houses of Bremen and Mayence. In 1894 Dr. Walter Damrosch organized his opera company in New York and engaged Mme. Gadski for leading rôles. In 1898 she became high dramatic soprano with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York, and the following year appeared at Covent Garden. She was constantly developing as a singer of Wagner rôles, notably Brunhilde and Isolde. Her repertoire included forty rôles in all, and the demand for her appearance at festivals here and abroad became more and more insistent. She sang at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York until 1917, when the notoriety caused by the activities of her husband, Captain Hans Tauscher, American agent for large German weapon manufacturers, forced her to resign. Hans Tauscher attended an opera, met Gadski, and they married on November 20, 1892 in Berlin, Germany. They had a daughter, Charlotte Tauscher Busch, who was born in Berlin on August 31, 1893, married Ernest Busch, a German grand nephew of Adolphus Busch on June 12 1923, (and died there on March 30, 1967). Highlights of her subsequent career in Germany included appearances in Wagner’s works at the 1899 Bayreuth Festival and at the 1905/06 Munich Festival.However, it was in English-speaking countries that Gadski built her international reputation as a diva. She made her successful American debut in New York in 1895 with the Damrosch Opera Company and became popular, too, in England. In 1896 she created the role of Hester Prynne in the fully staged premiere of Walter Damrosch’s opera The Scarlet Letter in Boston. She sang in London at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1906. Some sources credit her with appearing at England’s Worcester Festival but this is an error. Actually, she sang at America’s Worcester festivals, held in the American state of Massachusetts during the late 1890s. Gadski was an extremely popular recitalist and, in 1899 to 1900, she capitalised on this business opportunity by embarking on a concert tour of the United States. She had also joined the star-studded roster of singers at the New York Metropolitan Opera, singing there from 1898 to 1904 and again from 1907 to 1917. Around 1902 she met Mabel Riegelman, a young soprano in San Francisco, and brought Mabel and her sister Ruby Riegelman (who was also her chaperone and accompanist) to Berlin in 1903 as her guest, then settling the two sisters in Stettin to continue their musical studies. In 1911 Gadski and Mabel Riegelman took the SS Kaiser Wilhelm II to New York City, where Gadski arranged for her star pupil Mabel Riegelman to debut as Gretel in Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. At the height of World War I, she was obliged to resign from the Metropolitan Opera because of her German links. Legend has it that she was deported from the United States as an alien enemy but this is not true. She spent the duration of the war living quietly in New York and Lake Spofford, New Hampshire, and did not revisit Germany until 1922. Gadski resumed her professional concert career in the United States in 1921. She did not return to the operatic stage, however, until the late 1920s; her first such appearance being in a 1928 production of Die Walküre mounted by the Washington National Opera, a semi-professional company not related to its present namesake. Thereafter, in the years 1929 to 1931, she made two tours as the star of her German Grand Opera Company, which produced dozens of performances of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. By this late date, however, her voice had been eroded by advancing age and strenuous use in her early years. A United States citizen since 1925, she was visiting Germany when she died in a car accident in Berlin on 22 February 1932.
TRACKLIST
Fliegende Holländer (Wagner) Versank ich jetzt (w. Goritz) 88370 C11723 Victor, Camden NJ 1912-03-14
Aida (Verdi) O Patria mia 88042 C4128 Victor, New York 1906-12-08
Aida (Verdi) Ritorna vincitor 88137 C5012 Victor, Camden NJ 1908-02-26
Stabat Mater (Rossini) Inflammatus 88059 C4320 Victor, New York 1907-03-17
Ständchen (Schubert) 88112 C5019 Victor, New York 1908-01-14
Tannhäuser (Wagner) Dich teure Halle 88057 C4127 Victor, New York 1907-03-17
Fliegende Holländer (Wagner) Jo-ho-hoe! Traft ihr das Schiff 88116 C5013 Victor, Camden NJ 1908-02-26
Tristan und Isolde (Wagner) Mild und leise 88058 C4319 Victor, Camden NJ 1913-10-23
Heidenröslein (Werner) 88566 C17744 Victor, Camden NJ 1916-05-26
Die Wacht am Rhein (Wilhelm) 88515 C15690 Victor, Camden NJ 1915-02-08
Still wie die Nacht (Götze) (w. Goritz) 88440 C13133 Victor, New York 1913-04-16
Ave Maria (Gounod) 81045 B1077 Victor, New York 1904-04-24
A slumber song (Gilmour) 87252 B17745 Victor, Camden NJ 1916-05-26
Tannhäuser (Wagner) Zurück von ihm! 043240 A 13182 Gramophone 1913-04-23
Zauberflöte (Mozart) Papagena, Papageno! (w. Goritz) 3-44105 A 13132 Gramophone 1913-04-16
Im Herbst (Franz) 88542 C14809 Victor, Camden NJ 1915-06-16
Siegfried (Wagner) Ewig war ich 88186 C7031 Victor, Camden NJ 1909-05-01
Aida (Verdi) Fu la sorte (w. Homer) 88163 C7033 Victor, Camden NJ 1909-05-01
Orfeo ed Euridice (Gluck) Su e con me vieni cara (w. Homer) 054456 A 8609 Gramophone 1910-02-07
Don Giovanni (Mozart) In quali eccessi 88253 C9489 Victor, Camden NJ 1910-09-29
Zauberflöte (Mozart) Du also bist mein Bräutigam (w. Sparkes, Mattfeld & Case) 88441 C13131 Victor, New York 1913-04-16
Zauberflöte (Mozart) Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen (w. Goritz) 88369 C11726 Victor, Camden NJ 1912-03-14
Walküre (Wagner) Ho-yo-to-ho! 7-43013 DA468 Gramophone 1916-05-26
25. Ballo in maschera (Verdi) Ma dall’arido stelo divulsa… Morrò, ma prima in grazia 88496, 88497, C14805, C14806 Victor, Camden NJ 1914-05-06
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