Verna Osborne
She was also an adjunct member of the voice faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, teaching at their extension campus in San Francisco.
[1] She married John Daniel, a West Point graduate, at the Church of the Pilgrims (Brooklyn, New York) on June 2, 1927.
[1] Osborne studied singing with Estelle Liebling, the voice teacher of Beverly Sills, in New York City.
[1] She began her vocal career as a radio singer, appearing as early as June 1923 in a program of coloratura soprano arias on WEAF (now WFAN) in New York City.
[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Osborne gave a concert of coloratura soprano arias at The Town Hall in New York City on April 8, 1935, with the Musical America reviewer noting that she had appeared in recital once before at that venue in 1934.
[33] In June 1936, Osborne traveled to Los Angeles, California, for the first time to perform as a guest artist in a concert of soprano arias broadcast on KHJ radio with an orchestra led by conductor Frederick Stark.
[39] On that program she performed songs from Sigmund Romberg's The New Moon with baritone Paul Keast and Leon Leonardi's orchestra which was recorded live at a concert in Los Angeles.
[1] In April 1938 she appeared as a guest artist on a program co-broadcast by KWG (AM) and KGO (AM) that featured her singing arias by George Gershwin and Victor Herbert with an orchestra led by Ernest-Gill Plamondon.
[46][47] Osborne was a protégé of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) conductor Pierre Monteux and was a frequent soloist with the orchestra in the 1940s.
[49] She later sang the Requiem again with the orchestra in 1947 with her fellow soloists including mezzo Herta Glaz, tenor Carl Hague, and baritone Perry Askam.
[51] She remained with the company for the next two seasons performing the roles of Konstanze in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1941) and Siebel in Gounod's Faust (1942).
[56] In December 1942 she performed a concert of arias with the Modesto Symphony Orchestra—among them "Caro nome che il mio cor" from Rigoletto.
[59] In October 1943 she starred in a production of Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto in Los Angeles with Walter Herbert conducting,[60] a work which the group also performed in San Francisco.
[65] In July 1944 she starred in a production of Sigmund Romberg's as Barbara Frietchie in My Maryland at the Iroquois Amphitheatre in Louisville, Kentucky.
[68] At the time of her career peak in the 1940s, Osborne was recognized for her good looks as a "tall, striking strawberry blonde".
"[1] In November 1949 she performed the role of Violetta in Verdi's La traviata with Arturo Casiglia's Pacific Opera Company (POC) in San Francisco.
The same obituary stated she abruptly stopped performing in 1949 after giving a benefit concert at the Academy of Music in San Francisco for an unknown reason.
[1] Despite the account given in her obituary, newspaper and magazine articles indicate that Osborne did perform and make recordings into the mid-1950s, and made a professional appearance at a music festival as late as 1967 (see below).
[77] In January 1951 she starred in a concert version of Strauss's Elektra given by the SFS with Astrid Varnay in the title role and Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting.
[87] In 1954 she sang a recital of rare French chasons at Wheeler Hall at the University of California where she was also teaching as a guest lecturer at the time of her performance.
[93][94] She continued to stage a variety of different opera workshop programs with SFMC into the 1960s,[95][96] including singing the part of Tosca herself in 1961[97] and later the role of Verdi's Violetta in 1965.
[100] In 1957 Osborne was appointed the head of the opera department at the Peninsula Conservatory of Music (PCM) in Burlingame, California,[101][102] a role she was still in as late as 1968.
[108] By 1968 she was teaching voice on the adjunct faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, (UCB) at their extension campus in San Francisco in addition to working at the PCM.
[110] Friends of Osborne during her time working as a voice teacher stated that she did not like to talk about her performance career and was a person who preferred to live life in the present and discuss the now rather than the past.
