Emma Eames

Emma Eames, 1892

Emma Eames (August 13, 1865 - June 13, 1952) was an American soprano. She sang lyric and lyric-dramatic roles in opera and enjoyed a brilliant career in New York, London and Paris during the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century.

The daughter of an international lawyer, Eames was born in Shanghai, China. (Her surname, incidentally, was pronouced "Ames" not "Eemes".) She attended school in Boston and later studied voice with the famous Paris-based teacher Mathilde Marchesi, although she would subsequently downplay Marchesi's influence on her singing technique.

Eames was eventually called on to play the heroine in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at the Paris Opéra. Debuting there in 1889, she would play the role many other times during the next two years, finally leaving Paris in 1891 for personal reasons.

That same year, she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, also as Juliette. The Met was where she would score her greatest triumphs, performing there in a range of operas until she departed from the company in 1909. Eames also made highly acclaimed appearances at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She sang intermittently in London from 1891 to 1901 and became regarded as a rival to Covent Garden's reigning diva, Nellie Melba.

The Boston opera company was Eames' artistic home in 1911-12. She also undertook concert tours of the United States and retired from the stage in 1916. In 1929, she wrote an autobiography, Some Memories and Reflections.

Recordings

Eames possessed a beautiful, aristocratic and well-schooled voice although she was sometimes criticised for the aloofness of her acting. She was reportedly unhappy with the way that she sounded on the primitive gramophone recordings which she had made prior to World War One. In 1939, however, she appeared on a radio show and picked out some her better records to play, speaking with little modesty about them.

Eames' voice was also captured live at the Met in 1903 on primitive Mapleson Cylinders. These cylinder recordings, along with the commercial gramophone records which she made for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1905-11, have been reissued complete on CD. Eames sang a comparatively wide array of operas, including Aida, Lohengrin, Tosca, Cavalleria Rusticana, Le Nozze di Figaro, Faust and Don Giovanni. Some of that artistic diversity is reflected on her recordings, which include both arias and duets.

Personal life

Eames was married twice, first to a painter, Julian Story, and then to the famous baritone Emilio de Gogorza, with whom she made some records. She was raised in Portland and Bath, Maine. Both marriages ended in divorce and much bitterness. She had no children, but in her autobiography admitted that she was pressured into a "medical procedure".

She relocated to New York in 1936, where she became a renowned vocal instructor. In New York she was fond of attending Broadway shows. Eames died in 1952 at the age of 86. She is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Bath, Maine. Her niece, Clare Eames, was the first wife of the noted playwright Sidney Howard.

Sources

• Michael Scott, The Record of Singing, Volume 1, Duckworth, London, 1977
• Harold Rosenthal & John Warrack, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, Oxford University Press, Second Edition, London, 1980
• Henry Pleasants, The Great Singers, Second Edition, Macmillan, London, 1983