Helen Traubel

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Helen Traubel (June 16, 1899 - July 28, 1972) was an American operatic dramatic soprano, best known for her Wagnerian roles, especially those of Brünnhilde and Isolde.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she made her debut as a concert singer with the St. Louis Symphony in 1923. In 1926 she got a first offer to join the Metropolitan Opera company which she turned down to continue with her studies. She didn't appear on the opera stage until May 12, 1937, when the composer Walter Damrosch asked her to sing the first performance of his opera The Man without a Country.

Since the Met already had two first-class Wagnerian sopranos, Kirsten Flagstad and Marjorie Lawrence, Traubel at first had difficulty finding her niche. Her debut as a regular company member was as Sieglinde in Die Walküre, the only standard role which she had previously sung, at the Chicago Opera. Flagstad left the US in 1941 to visit her homeland of Norway and couldn't return for political reasons. The same year, Lawrence was stricken with polio and her career was curtailed.

Traubel later triumphed in Tannhäuser and in Tristan und Isolde. She was renowned for her strong voice, which was often described as a "gleaming sword"; her endurance and purity of tone were unsurpassed, especially as Brünnhilde and Isolde. Although she longed to sing Italian opera, she never did in a complete performance, although she often included Italian arias in her recital repertoire. Towards the end of her Met career, she did add the Marschallin in Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier briefly to her repertoire.

Traubel's contract wasn't renewed in 1953 when the Metropolitan Opera's Rudolf Bing expressed disapproval of her radio and TV appearances with the likes of Jimmy Durante and her expressed desire to expand her lucrative career in major supper and night clubs. Traubel went on to appear at the Copacabana, as well as in many cameo television roles.

After her Met career, she appeared on Broadway in the Rodgers and Hammerstein failure, Pipe Dream, playing a bordello madame with a heart of gold and the voice of Isolde. Additionally, she appeared in the films Deep in my Heart, Gunn and The Ladies Man. She also appeared opposite Groucho Marx as Katisha in a Bell Telephone presentation (abridged) of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

Traubel wrote a murder mystery, The Metropolitan Opera Murders (1951), which features a soprano heroine, Elsa Vaughan, who helps solve the mystery, as well as being a thinly-disguised portrait of Traubel herself. She also wrote an autobiography, St. Louis Woman (1959).

For her contribution to the recording industry, Helen Traubel has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6422 Hollywood Blvd. In 1994 she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Helen Traubel died in Santa Monica, California, aged 73, and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

• Traubel's Entry at the St. Louis Walk of Fame