Emma Nevada

Emma Nevada (née Wixom) (7 February 1859 – 20 June 1940) was an American operatic coloratura soprano particularly known for her performances in operas by Bellini and Donizetti and the French composers Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod, and Léo Delibes.

A gifted linguist who learned sign language for the deaf and spoke Paiute, Washoe and Shoshone, she studied Spanish, Italian, French and German at Mills College in California as well as music.

[3] She then studied singing for three years in Vienna with Mathilde Marchesi before making her stage debut at Her Majesty's Theatre in London as Amina in La sonnambula on 17 May 1880.

A medallion with her portrait, along with those of Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran, adorns Bellini's monument in Naples.

Her flute-like voice was small but she used it expertly—Sir Thomas Beecham immediately christened her "a natural coloratura equal to any of her contemporaries."

Emma Nevada as Nora in The Pearl of Brazil, by Augustus Goodyear Heaton in Paris 1884. This portrait hangs at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia
Emma Nevada in 1885.
Portrait of Emma Nevada, soprano (1859-1940), before 1917.
Emma Nevada, 1899.