Sophie Braslau was a contralto

Contralto

Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...

 prominent in United States opera, starting with her debut in New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

's 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...

 in 1913 when she was just 21 years of age.

When she was still a child, Braslau's talent was discovered by Signor A. Buzzi-Pecci, a voice teacher who visited her Russian-born Jewish parents and heard the little girl humming. Further influenced by the style of Alma Gluck

Alma Gluck

Alma Gluck was a Romanian-born American soprano, one of the world's most famous female singers at the peak of her career .-Life and career:...

, Braslau was soon touring widely and frequently in the United States and Canada and, in the 1920s, Europe, using a repertoire which included works in English, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Yiddish.

She retired from her full-time opera career in the late 1920s and performed very little as frail health brought her life to an early close. At her funeral Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

 was an honorary pallbearer

Pallbearer

A pall-bearer is one of several funeral participants who helps carry the casket of a deceased person from a religious or memorial service or viewing either directly to a cemetery or mausoleum, or to and from the hearse which carries the coffin....

; the eulogy was delivered 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...

, music critic for 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...

.

External link

• Braslau's voice in 1928, her rendition of "Just Awearyin' for You
  Just Awearyin' for You
  "Just Awearyin' for You" is a parlor song, one of that genre's all-time hits.The lyrics were written by Frank Lebby Stanton and published in his Songs of the Soil . The tune was composed by Carrie Jacobs-Bond and published as part of Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose in 1901. Harry T...
  
  " w. Frank Lebby Stanton
  Frank Lebby Stanton
  Frank Lebby Stanton—born February 22, 1857 in Charleston, South Carolina, died January 7, 1927 in Atlanta, Georgia, and frequently credited as Frank L. Stanton, Frank Stanton or F. L...
  
   (1857-1927) m. Carrie Jacobs-Bond
  Carrie Jacobs-Bond
  Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter who composed some 175 pieces of popular sheet music from the 1890s through the early 1940s....
  
  (1862-1946)