[3] She stayed at Juilliard for graduate studies with Belle Julie Soudant,[4] Marcella Sembrich[5] and Florence Page Kimball.

[7] She was the female winner of the 1937 Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air, a talent contest program which awarded a cash prize and a singing role in a spring production.

[6] Stellman's appearances with the Metropolitan Opera included soprano roles in Orfeo ed Euridice (1936),[8] The Man Without a Country (1937), Aïda (1938),[9] Madama Butterfly (1940),[10] Die Walküre (1940),[11] Il Trovatore and The Marriage of Figaro (1941),[12] Manon (1942),[13] Lohengrin (1942),[14] Louise (1943),[15] Tannhäuser (1943),[16] Carmen (1943),[17] La Traviata (1943),[18] The Magic Flute (1945),[19] Rigoletto (1945),[20] Der Rosenkavalier (1945),[21] Lakmé (1946),[22] Faust (1947),[23] Hansel and Gretel (1947),[24] and Lucia di Lammermoor (1950).

[27] She made national headlines when she was called in to sing "Elsa" in Lohengrin in Boston in 1942, a role she had never performed before, when Astrid Varnay fell ill.[28][29][30] In 1933, Maxine Stellman married fellow opera singer Joseph W. Caruso, a Sicilian-born tenor with the Metropolitan Opera.

The Carusos owned the William Harris House in Brattleboro, one of the oldest buildings in Vermont.