Ellen Beach Yaw
After further vocal studies, Yaw made her grand opera debut as Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet in Nice, France, in 1903 or 1904.
In 1908, she gave a single performance of the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, her only appearance there.
[7] At this point she began to perform more regularly, with American and European concert tours in 1894 and 1895 and appearances at Carnegie Hall in New York in January 1896.
[11] Yaw had difficulty in the role the first two nights of the production, though the reviews were mixed,[12] and both the music director, Francois Cellier, and Mrs. Carte advocated for her replacement.
"[13] It was too late, however, and the next day Yaw stopped at Sullivan's flat to tell him that she had been dismissed summarily by Mrs. Carte (ostensibly on account of illness).
Meux became Yaw's patron, paying her expenses and sending her to Paris to study for three years with the Mathilde Marchesi, one of the foremost singing teachers in Europe.
[17][18] According to some later reports, she did in fact inherit a substantial sum from Meux, which she invested in real estate and citrus groves near her retirement home in Covina, California.
[10] In February 1905, she sang the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor under the stage name Elena Elvanna at the Quirinal Theater in Rome, followed by additional performances in Naples, Catania, and Milan.
At the time, the Met was competing for singers and public support with Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company, which had been formed only two years earlier and, in spite of some initial skepticism from the New York musical establishment, had quickly become a formidable competitor, booking international stars such as Nellie Melba, Mary Garden, Lillian Nordica, and Alessandro Bonci, and programming new and rarely performed works such as Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann.
[24] In one of his greatest coups, Hammerstein had secured a contract with soprano Luisa Tetrazzini, then at the peak of her fame and coming off a series of performances at Covent Garden in London, where she had been rapturously greeted as "the voice of the century".
[26] Her association with his crosstown rival was particularly galling to Metropolitan director Heinrich Conried, who had tried to obtain Tetrazzini's services as early as 1904, but had failed when their negotiations devolved into recriminations and lawsuits.
[28] It was at this point that Conried offered Ellen Beach Yaw, whose reputation as a vocal prodigy had already garnered great attention from the press, a chance to put on "a Tetrazzini-like show" at the Metropolitan.
Yaw's Metropolitan debut was by all accounts a popular success, but it received mixed reviews from critics, some of which specifically alluded to the celebrity war between the two opera companies.
The New York Press reportedly wrote: Miss Yaw's coloratura is more perfect than Mme Tetrazzini's, her scales are lighter and more fluent, her trills are much more flexible, precise, and speedy.
[32] After her Metropolitan Opera experience, Yaw confined her appearances chiefly to concert tours, which she found both easier and more financially rewarding than the operatic stage.
[22] Her home was a center of musical activity, including vocal and instrumental recitals, where girls and young women sought her singing advice.
[46] She was married twice, first in 1907 to Vere Goldthwaite, a Nebraska-born Boston lawyer, who died in 1912;[3][36] then, in 1920, to Franklin D. Cannon, a pianist and music teacher, who accompanied on her concert tours in the 1920s.
[3] After her death, her memoirs, entitled The Song of the Lark, were reportedly in the hands of her student Altamirano, who was preparing them for publication, but they were not published and have not been found; he died in 1986.
