Rosemary Kuhlmann
Encyclopedia
Rosemary Kuhlmann is an American operatic mezzo-soprano
and Broadway musical actress most known for originating the role of the Mother in Gian Carlo Menotti
's Amahl and the Night Visitors
, the first opera
commissioned for television. Contrary to what is sometimes believed, Kuhlmann portrayed the role on the annual live NBC
broadcast of the production from 1951 through 1962.
, graduating in 1939. After graduating from high school she worked as a model for Lord & Taylor
and then later as a secretary at Chase Manhattan. With the outbreak of World War II she joined the WAVES
. While in the WAVES, Kuhlman was sent to the University of Wisconsin–Madison
where she and a hundred and ten other women learned Morse code
for three months.
Kuhlmann then returned to New York and worked six days a week "sending Morse code to the ships at sea." She also performed on radio programs promoting the WAVES and soon had her own weekly show, Navy Serenade, on WNEW where she would sing popular songs of the day."
Following the war, Kuhlmann auditioned for and was accepted into the Juilliard School
on a full scholarship through the GI Bill. While at Juilliard, Kuhlmann studied with Lucia Dunham and participated in several opera production including playing the part of Polly in John Gay
's The Beggar's Opera
. However, Kuhlmann says that at this time in her life that, although she loved to sing, she was not in love with opera. She remarked, "[In opera] it seemed like people stood for hours saying 'goodbye' and 'goodbye,' and nothing happened. My friend Pat Neway
took me to Die Walküre
at the Metropolitan Opera
. I hated it." In 1950, Kuhlmann graduated from the Juilliard School with a degree in Vocal Performance.
's professional chorale and was accepted. Although contracted to sing with the ensemble for two years, Kuhlmann broke her contract when she auditioned for and was cast as the Secretary in Gian Carlo Menotti's original Broadway
production of The Consul
; replacing Gloria Lane who had performed the role at its premiere in Philadelphia. Kuhlmann said about this time, "Everybody said Robert Shaw wouldn't let me out of my contract, but he did. Menotti's music turned me on to opera. It was so real—the vocal and the dramatic melded. When I did The Consul, it wasn't even like I was singing. I was living it, and the music value was just fantastic."
In 1951, Kuhlmann joined the ensemble of the Broadway musical revival of Music in the Air
, directed by Oscar Hammerstein II
. During this production, Kuhlmann was invited by Chandler Cowles
, who had produced The Consul, to audition for Menotti for the part of the Mother in his new opera Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Mark Hellinger Theatre
. Kuhlmann said of this audition, "I sang 'Voi lo sapete' and some art songs in English. Gian Carlo walked up to the stage and said, 'You're a little young, but we'll make you look like a Biblical woman.' They whisked me over to sing for NBC Opera producer Samuel Chotzinoff, and that was it. I had the role."
Kuhlmann went directly from the closing of Music in the Air to rehearsals of Amahl and the Night Visitors in late November 1951. Rehearsals lasted approximately one month with Menotti, television director Kirk Browning
, and conductor Thomas Schippers
. In an interview, Kuhlmann said, "The crowning glory was having Toscanini attend one of the rehearsals. He kissed me on the cheek with tears in his eyes."
On Christmas Eve, 1951, Amahl and the Night Visitors was telecast live on NBC and Rosemary Kuhlmann became instantly famous. The broadcast drew an estimated viewership of five million people, an enormous audience for that time. The following morning—Christmas Day—The New York Times
ran a front page review by Olin Downes
on Menotti's "tender and exquisite" new opera. The article praised Kuhlmann's "moving portrayal, enhanced by the resources of her voice." The forty-five-minute work became an annual tradition, airing live for ten consecutive Christmases with the same adult cast members—Kuhlmann as the Mother and David Aiken
, Leon Lishner
and Andrew McKinley
as the Three Kings. The role of Amahl, originated by Chet Allen, was played in later broadcasts by Bill McIver and Kirk Jordan, both of whom played it opposite Kuhlmann.
After the premiere of Amahl and the Night Visitors, Kuhlmann's career took off. In 1952, a few weeks after the premiere and the LP studio recording of Amahl and the Night Visitors, Kuhlmann toured Europe with Menotti, once again playing the Secretary in The Consul. That same year, Kuhlmann made her debut with the New York City Opera
in a stage production of Amahl and the Night Visitors. She would return to the New York City Opera several more times during the 1950s for other productions, including the roles of Magda in The Consul, the title role in Bizet's Carmen
, Meg Page in Verdi's Falstaff
, Angelina in Gioacchino Rossini
's La Cenerentola
, Nicklausse in Offenbach
's Les Contes d'Hoffmann
and the Tsarina in The Golden Slippers.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Kuhlmann was a frequent guest artist with symphony orchestras and played Giorgetta on a CBC telecast of Puccini's Il Tabarro
. She also starred in summer operettas in Dallas and St. Louis.
In 1956 George Abbott
and Harold Prince cast Kuhlmann as Meg in the national tour of Damn Yankees
. She left the tour in early 1957 to marry Hugh Evans, an executive at Yachting and Boating magazine. That same year, Kuhlmann made two more opera performances with NBC: Desideria in Menotti's The Saint of Bleecker Street
and the devout Mother Marie in Poulenc
's Dialogues of the Carmelites
, with Elaine Malbin
as Blanche, Patricia Neway
as the Old Prioress and Leontyne Price
as Mme. Lidoine.
In 1961, Kuhlmann made her last original NBC Opera telecast in Leonard Kastle
's Deseret as Brigham Young's eldest wife, Sarah. After this production, Kuhlmann decided to retire from her career in order to pursue raising a family with her husband. Kuhlman says of the decision, "Life is all about time and place. Everyone—my teachers, my coach and my agent, Gus Schirmer—thought my next step was to sing at the Met. But then I met my husband and wanted to raise a family. Maybe I could have done both, and that would have been wonderful. But I would never give up what I have today—my two children and five grandchildren—to have said on my résumé that I sang at the Met."
In 1978, Kuhlmann divorced her husband and took what was supposed to be a four-month temporary position at PepsiCo
. Her temporary job turned into a sixteen-year career as the executive assistant to the international vice president of the company. Kuhlmann retired from PepsiCo in 1994, then worked for five years as the executive assistant to the director of the Westchester Conservatory of Music before "retiring for good" in 1999.
In 2001, Kuhlmann was reunited with Menotti at New York's Museum of Television & Radio for a fiftieth-anniversary salute to Amahl. On January 20, 2006 she returned to the same Museum for a fiftieth-anniversary salute to Dialogues of the Carmelites, with a screening of the NBC Opera production.
click here: Watch Here
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
and Broadway musical actress most known for originating the role of the Mother in Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. He wrote the classic Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, among about two dozen other operas intended to appeal to popular...
's Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on December 24, 1951, in New York City at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast...
, the first opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
commissioned for television. Contrary to what is sometimes believed, Kuhlmann portrayed the role on the annual live NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
broadcast of the production from 1951 through 1962.
Early life and education
Rosemary Kuhlmann was born in New York City. She attended high school in Staten IslandStaten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
, graduating in 1939. After graduating from high school she worked as a model for Lord & Taylor
Lord & Taylor
Lord & Taylor, colloquially known as L&T, or LT, based in New York City, is the oldest upscale, specialty-retail department store chain in the United States. Concentrated in the eastern U.S., the retailer operated independently for nearly a century prior to joining American Dry Goods...
and then later as a secretary at Chase Manhattan. With the outbreak of World War II she joined the WAVES
WAVES
The WAVES were a World War II-era division of the U.S. Navy that consisted entirely of women. The name of this group is an acronym for "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" ; the word "emergency" implied that the acceptance of women was due to the unusual circumstances of the war and...
. While in the WAVES, Kuhlman was sent to the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
where she and a hundred and ten other women learned Morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
for three months.
Kuhlmann then returned to New York and worked six days a week "sending Morse code to the ships at sea." She also performed on radio programs promoting the WAVES and soon had her own weekly show, Navy Serenade, on WNEW where she would sing popular songs of the day."
Following the war, Kuhlmann auditioned for and was accepted into the Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
on a full scholarship through the GI Bill. While at Juilliard, Kuhlmann studied with Lucia Dunham and participated in several opera production including playing the part of Polly in John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
's The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
. However, Kuhlmann says that at this time in her life that, although she loved to sing, she was not in love with opera. She remarked, "[In opera] it seemed like people stood for hours saying 'goodbye' and 'goodbye,' and nothing happened. My friend Pat Neway
Patricia Neway
Patricia Neway is an American operatic soprano and musical theatre actress who had an active international career during the mid-1940s through the 1970s. She is particularly remembered for creating roles in the world premieres of several contemporary American operas, most notably Magda Sorel in...
took me to Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
. I hated it." In 1950, Kuhlmann graduated from the Juilliard School with a degree in Vocal Performance.
Career
Directly after her graduation from Juilliard, Kuhlmann auditioned for Robert ShawRobert Shaw (conductor)
Robert Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Shaw received 14 Grammy awards, four ASCAP awards for service to contemporary music, the first Guggenheim Fellowship...
's professional chorale and was accepted. Although contracted to sing with the ensemble for two years, Kuhlmann broke her contract when she auditioned for and was cast as the Secretary in Gian Carlo Menotti's original Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
production of The Consul
The Consul
The Consul is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, his first full-length opera. Its first performance was on March 1, 1950, at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia with Patricia Neway as the lead heroine Magda Sorel, Gloria Lane as the secretary of the consulate,...
; replacing Gloria Lane who had performed the role at its premiere in Philadelphia. Kuhlmann said about this time, "Everybody said Robert Shaw wouldn't let me out of my contract, but he did. Menotti's music turned me on to opera. It was so real—the vocal and the dramatic melded. When I did The Consul, it wasn't even like I was singing. I was living it, and the music value was just fantastic."
In 1951, Kuhlmann joined the ensemble of the Broadway musical revival of Music in the Air
Music in the Air
Music in the Air is a musical written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern . It introduced songs such as "The Song Is You", "In Egern on the Tegern See" and "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star"...
, directed by Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...
. During this production, Kuhlmann was invited by Chandler Cowles
Chandler Cowles
Chandler Cowles, born in New Haven, Connecticut, was an actor, producer, or co-producer in at least 11 New York theatrical productions from 1946 through 1960. Cowles collaborated closely with Gian-Carlo Menotti and Efrem Zimbalist Jr...
, who had produced The Consul, to audition for Menotti for the part of the Mother in his new opera Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Mark Hellinger Theatre
Mark Hellinger Theatre
The Mark Hellinger Theatre is a generally used name of a former legitimate Broadway theater, located at 237 West 51st Street in midtown Manhattan, New York City. Since 1991, it has been known as the Times Square Church...
. Kuhlmann said of this audition, "I sang 'Voi lo sapete' and some art songs in English. Gian Carlo walked up to the stage and said, 'You're a little young, but we'll make you look like a Biblical woman.' They whisked me over to sing for NBC Opera producer Samuel Chotzinoff, and that was it. I had the role."
Kuhlmann went directly from the closing of Music in the Air to rehearsals of Amahl and the Night Visitors in late November 1951. Rehearsals lasted approximately one month with Menotti, television director Kirk Browning
Kirk Browning
Kirk Browning was an American television director and producer who had hundreds of productions to his credit, including 185 broadcasts of Live from Lincoln Center....
, and conductor Thomas Schippers
Thomas Schippers
Thomas Schippers was an American conductor. He was highly-regarded for his work in opera.-Biography:...
. In an interview, Kuhlmann said, "The crowning glory was having Toscanini attend one of the rehearsals. He kissed me on the cheek with tears in his eyes."
On Christmas Eve, 1951, Amahl and the Night Visitors was telecast live on NBC and Rosemary Kuhlmann became instantly famous. The broadcast drew an estimated viewership of five million people, an enormous audience for that time. The following morning—Christmas Day—The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
ran a front page review by Olin Downes
Olin Downes
Olin Downes was an American music critic.He studied piano, music theory, and music criticism in New York and Boston, and it was in those two cities that he made his career as a music critic—first with the Boston Post and then with the New York Times...
on Menotti's "tender and exquisite" new opera. The article praised Kuhlmann's "moving portrayal, enhanced by the resources of her voice." The forty-five-minute work became an annual tradition, airing live for ten consecutive Christmases with the same adult cast members—Kuhlmann as the Mother and David Aiken
David Aiken (baritone)
David Aiken was an American operatic baritone, opera director, and United States Army Air Corps officer...
, Leon Lishner
Leon Lishner
Leon Lishner was an American operatic bass-baritone. He was particularly associated with the works of Gian Carlo Menotti, having created parts in the world premieres of four operas by that composer...
and Andrew McKinley
Andrew McKinley
Andrew McKinley was an American operatic tenor, violinist, arts administrator, music educator, and school administrator. Although he mainly performed in the United States, he had an active international singing career with major opera companies and symphony orchestras from the 1940s through the...
as the Three Kings. The role of Amahl, originated by Chet Allen, was played in later broadcasts by Bill McIver and Kirk Jordan, both of whom played it opposite Kuhlmann.
After the premiere of Amahl and the Night Visitors, Kuhlmann's career took off. In 1952, a few weeks after the premiere and the LP studio recording of Amahl and the Night Visitors, Kuhlmann toured Europe with Menotti, once again playing the Secretary in The Consul. That same year, Kuhlmann made her debut with the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
in a stage production of Amahl and the Night Visitors. She would return to the New York City Opera several more times during the 1950s for other productions, including the roles of Magda in The Consul, the title role in Bizet's Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, Meg Page in Verdi's Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
, Angelina in Gioacchino Rossini
Gioacchino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces...
's La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
, Nicklausse in Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Les contes d'Hoffmann
Les contes d'Hoffmann is an opéra by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, based on short stories by E. T. A...
and the Tsarina in The Golden Slippers.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Kuhlmann was a frequent guest artist with symphony orchestras and played Giorgetta on a CBC telecast of Puccini's Il Tabarro
Il tabarro
Il tabarro is an opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on Didier Gold's play La houppelande. It is the first of the trio of operas known as Il trittico...
. She also starred in summer operettas in Dallas and St. Louis.
In 1956 George Abbott
George Abbott
George Francis Abbott was an American theater producer and director, playwright, screenwriter, and film director and producer whose career spanned more than nine decades.-Early years:...
and Harold Prince cast Kuhlmann as Meg in the national tour of Damn Yankees
Damn Yankees
Damn Yankees is a musical comedy with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League...
. She left the tour in early 1957 to marry Hugh Evans, an executive at Yachting and Boating magazine. That same year, Kuhlmann made two more opera performances with NBC: Desideria in Menotti's The Saint of Bleecker Street
The Saint of Bleecker Street
The Saint of Bleecker Street is an opera in three acts by Gian Carlo Menotti to an original English libretto by the composer. It was first performed at The Broadway Theatre in New York City on December 27, 1954. David Poleri and Davis Cunningham alternated in the role of Michele, and Thomas...
and the devout Mother Marie in Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
's Dialogues of the Carmelites
Dialogues of the Carmelites
Dialogues of the Carmelites , is an opera in three acts by Francis Poulenc. In 1953, M. Valcarenghi approached Poulenc to commission a ballet for La Scala in Milan; when Poulenc found the proposed subject uninspiring, Valcarenghi suggested instead a screenplay by Georges Bernanos, based on the...
, with Elaine Malbin
Elaine Malbin
Elaine Malbin is an American soprano who had a prolific international career singing in operas, musicals, and concerts from 1949 through 1967. She appeared in a number of Broadway productions in the 1940s and 1950s...
as Blanche, Patricia Neway
Patricia Neway
Patricia Neway is an American operatic soprano and musical theatre actress who had an active international career during the mid-1940s through the 1970s. She is particularly remembered for creating roles in the world premieres of several contemporary American operas, most notably Magda Sorel in...
as the Old Prioress and Leontyne Price
Leontyne Price
Mary Violet Leontyne Price is an American soprano. Born and raised in the Deep South, she rose to international acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, and was one of the first African Americans to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.One critic characterized Price's voice as "vibrant",...
as Mme. Lidoine.
In 1961, Kuhlmann made her last original NBC Opera telecast in Leonard Kastle
Leonard Kastle
Leonard Gregory Kastle was an opera composer, librettist, and director, though he is best known as the writer/director of The Honeymoon Killers, his only venture into the cinema, for which he did all his own research. He was educated at the Curtis Institute of Music studying under opera composer...
's Deseret as Brigham Young's eldest wife, Sarah. After this production, Kuhlmann decided to retire from her career in order to pursue raising a family with her husband. Kuhlman says of the decision, "Life is all about time and place. Everyone—my teachers, my coach and my agent, Gus Schirmer—thought my next step was to sing at the Met. But then I met my husband and wanted to raise a family. Maybe I could have done both, and that would have been wonderful. But I would never give up what I have today—my two children and five grandchildren—to have said on my résumé that I sang at the Met."
In 1978, Kuhlmann divorced her husband and took what was supposed to be a four-month temporary position at PepsiCo
PepsiCo
PepsiCo Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York, United States, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company...
. Her temporary job turned into a sixteen-year career as the executive assistant to the international vice president of the company. Kuhlmann retired from PepsiCo in 1994, then worked for five years as the executive assistant to the director of the Westchester Conservatory of Music before "retiring for good" in 1999.
In 2001, Kuhlmann was reunited with Menotti at New York's Museum of Television & Radio for a fiftieth-anniversary salute to Amahl. On January 20, 2006 she returned to the same Museum for a fiftieth-anniversary salute to Dialogues of the Carmelites, with a screening of the NBC Opera production.
Watch and listen
To listen to Rosemary Kuhlmann in her signature role as The Mother in Amahl and the Night VisitorsAmahl and the Night Visitors
Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on December 24, 1951, in New York City at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast...
click here: Watch Here