Weed wrote, "My only equipments for my future career were a good, natural contralto voice, an excellent piano and an inordinate love of song.

When she was 16, she sang in the Rochester Central Church Ladies' quartette as a contralto and for two years received "excellent" training from the organist.

[4] Before leaving for Germany, Weed sang "with charming effect a contralto aria from Freischütz" for the Metropolitan Opera's Grand Sunday Night Concert in 1894.

[7] She debuted in 1896 as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with "brilliant success"[8] and in 1898 she performed Freia in Rheingold at the Bayreuth Festival.

In an unsealed letter to her sister in Rochester, Weed wrote about how the husband of a couple whose marriage she sang at had died at the Battle of Liège.

She wrote, "We have all read about war, but it has seemed a part of history, dim and distant, and now when one experiences the sadness and depression and horror of it, it is too real.

"[18] She also wrote about the transportation, communication and financial problems for the hundreds of stranded Americans and how she planned to travel back to Berlin.

After completing her international stage career, she returned to teach in her home town as the Dean of Women at the newly formed University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and as a Dramatic Instructor in the Opera Department.