Rose Bampton

Rose Bampton (November 28, 1907 in Lakewood, Ohio – August 21, 2007 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania) was an American opera singer who had an active international career during the 1930s and 1940s.

She entered Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she initially began training as a soprano, but was redirected by her voice teacher into the mezzo-soprano repertoire after a serious bout of laryngitis.

Other roles with the company included Mistress Bentson in Lakmé (1929), Feodor in Boris Godunov with Georges Baklanoff in the title role (1929), Mama Lucia in Cavalleria rusticana (1929, 1931), Alisa in Lucia di Lammermoor (1930), the shepherd boy in Tosca (1930, 1932), Myrtale in Thaïs (1930, 1932), the first maid in Elektra with Charlotte Boerner as Chrysothemis (1931, 1932), Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde with Paul Althouse as Tristan (1932), Wellgunde in both Das Rheingold and Götterdämmerung (1932), and Waltraute in Die Walküre (1932).

[4] While performing at the PGOC, Bampton entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 1930 to pursue graduate studies in singing where her voice teachers included Horatio Connell and Queena Mario.

[3] A recording of Bampton's performance of the Gurre-Lieder with the Philadelphia Orchestra reached the ears of Giulio Gatti-Casazza, then General Director of the Metropolitan Opera.

According to Opera News, Bampton initially hesitated to accept the invitation as "she had doubts as to whether her true vocal range was mezzo or soprano and was concerned about her lack of stage experience."

However, she relented and made her first appearance with the company for an out of town engagement in Philadelphia on November 22, 1932, as Laura Adorno in La Gioconda with Rosa Ponselle in the title role, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi as Enzo, and Giuseppe Sturani conducting.

[7] Just six days after her Met debut in Philadelphia, Bampton made her first appearance at the actual Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, reprising the role of Laura.

She sang at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires every year between 1942 and 1948, making her debut with the company as the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier.

[5] At the Teatro Colón she tackled several roles that she never performed anywhere else, most notably several heroines in Strauss operas (Daphne, Chrysothemis and Ariadne), Eva in Die Meistersinger, Agathe in Der Freischütz, and Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro.

A fruitful professional association with Arturo Toscanini began in 1936, when Bampton sang in Debussy's La Damoiselle élue with the NYP, and included several broadcasts with the conductor and his NBC Symphony Orchestra.

It was Toscanini's first radio broadcast of a virtually complete opera - all of the music was included, but all of the dialogue (except for the spoken melodrama in the prison scene) was omitted.

[7] Bampton portrayed Aunt Polly in the 1956 U.S. Steel Hour production of Frank Luther's musical version of Tom Sawyer.