Sibyl Sanderson

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Sibyl Sanderson

Sibyl Swift Sanderson (born December 7, 1865 in Sacramento (California) , † May 15, 1903 in Paris ) was an American opera singer ( soprano ) and muse of Jules Massenet .

Her father Silas Sanderson (1824-1886) was the chief judge at the Supreme Court of California and then a highly paid legal advisor to the Southern Pacific Railroad . Sibyl Sanderson received lessons in San Francisco and in Paris at the National Conservatory with Mathilde Marchesi de Castrone and Giovanni Sbriglia . Her debut - back then as Ada Palmer - was in The Hague in 1888 in the Royal Opera as Manon in the opera by Jules Massenet . From 1889 she was at the Opéra Comique in Paris, where she then had great success. She became the lover of Massenet, who composed several operas tailored to her, each with her as the protagonist in the world premiere, for example in Esclarmonde in 1889 in the Komische Oper, in 1894 in the Grand Opera in Thaïs , the latter opera was an enormous success for her. In 1890/91 she was engaged in Brussels (Theater de la Monnaie) and in 1891 she was a guest in Covent Garden (in Manon) and she appeared in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In 1894/95 and 1901/02 she was at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In London and New York her successes were less than in Paris.

In 1897 they married the Cuban millionaire, heir to a sugar-growing fortune, named Antonio E. Terry. She therefore temporarily gave up her operatic career and when she tried to come back two years later after the death of her husband in 1899, it was initially unsuccessful. Her final years were marked by illness, alcoholism, and depression. After Kutsch / Riemens, however, she had success again at the Komische Oper in Paris in 1901, but died soon after of the flu.

In 1893 she sang the title role in the world premiere of Phryné by Camille Saint-Saëns , which the composer wrote for her. She also sang in Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod, for example .

Both her performance, her beauty and her vocal range were praised, the latter reaching up to the three-stroke g and her pitch was compared with the Eiffel Tower (“sol Eiffel”). Recordings are not known.

Massenet considered her the ideal Manon and her Thais unforgettable.

Sibyl Sanderson in the United States in 1895 in a theater pose

She was the patron of another diva of the French operatic repertoire, Mary Garden .

In 1920 her body was transferred to Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis .

literature

  • Jack Winsor Hansen: The Sibyl Sanderson Story: Requiem For A Diva , Portland, OR: Cambridge: Amadeus Press, 2004. ISBN 1-57467-094-8 .
  • Karen Henson: Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteenth Century , Cambridge Studies in Opera, Cambridge UP 2015
  • KJ Kutsch, Leo Riemens, Großes Sängerlexikon, KG Saur, 2003

Web links

Commons : Sibyl Sanderson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data after entry in KJ Kutsch, Leo Riemens, Großes Sängerlexikon, KG Saur, 2003
  2. ↑ Sybil Sanderson Married, New York Times, December 3, 1897 (pdf)
  3. ^ Sibyl Sanderson Dead: Singer Passes Away in Paris, New York Times, May 16, 1903. (pdf)
  4. ↑ Quoted from Kutsch, Riemans, Großes Sängerlexikon
  5. ↑ Entry in Find a Grave
personal data
SURNAME Sanderson, Sibyl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sanderson, Sibyl Swift (full name); Palmer, Ada
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American opera singer (soprano) and muse of Jules Massenet
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Sacramento, California
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1903
Place of death Paris