(Autobiography of the Baroness de Wartegg. Collated by Cap...)
Autobiography of the Baroness de Wartegg. Collated by Captain E. B. Hitchcock. Preface by A. M. Williamson. Facsimile reprint of 1925 edition. Illustrated with photos.
Minnie Hauk was an American operatic soprano. She was the first international opera superstar to emerge from the United States, who was particularly celebrated for her Carmen.
Background
Minnie Hauk was born Amalia Mignon Hauck on November 16, 1851 in New York City. She was the daughter of a German carpenter (her autobiography supplies no particulars regarding her mother's name or her parents' antecedents) who, when she was yet a child, moved first to Providence, Rhode Island, and then to Sumner City, Kansas, in a day when Indians still attacked the emigrant trains.
At Fort Leavenworth her father worked at his trade, and her mother kept a boardinghouse.
Education
Hauk went to school until, but after a brief stay in Sumner the family floated down the Missouri and the Mississippi in a houseboat to New Orleans. There she studied with Curto, a well-known French singing teacher, and made her first appearance in concert singing the "Casta Diva" from Norma and a florid air from Auber's Crown Diamonds. She took further lessons from Moritz Strakosch. Later the family removed to New York where Hauk studied with A. Errani and for a short time with Albites.
Career
In New York Hauk made her debut in the Brooklyn Academy of Music, October 13, 1866, as Amina in Sonnambula with pronounced success.
Her New York debut as Prascovia in L'Étoile du Nord occurred the same year. Now definitely launched on her career, and in 1867 sang the part of Juliette in the first American production of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette. She also took part in the American premières of other important operas, among them Carmen and Manon.
In 1868 she made her London debut at the Haymarket as Amina; she sang in Paris, Moscow, and St. Petersburg; and in Vienna she was the prima donna assoluta of the Komische Oper (later Ring Theater), where she created the roles of Javotte, in Delibes' Le Roi l'a dit, and of Carlo Broschi in La Part du Diable.
Later, at the Berlin Opera, she was a great favorite, notably as Katherine in Goetz's Taming of the Shrew.
She was acclaimed as Carmen in Brussels and as Violetta in London (1878) and sang every season in the last-named city until 1881.
During her concert tour of the United States and Canada, 1883-1884, she sang at the White House for President Arthur. She retired in 1895.
Though she sang in few Wagnerian operas, her extensive repertory included more than one hundred roles. She was acquainted with a host of petty German princes.
When she was left destitute by her husband's death in 1918, Geraldine Farrar and the Music Lovers Foundation raised funds to make her last years comfortable. She died at her home, Villa Tribschen, on Lake Lucerne.
Achievements
Minnie Hauk went down in history as the first full-fledged, internationally acclaimed operatic prima donna to be produced by the United States; she was particularly known for her rich, powerful soprano voice with a notable mezzo quality.
She was the recipient of numerous decorations, including Prussian, French, and Italian.
Hauk's appearance excited much interest, "from the fact that she (was) nativeborn exceedingly pretty and gave undoubted promise of future eminence".
Connections
In 1881 Hauk married the well-known traveler, author, and correspondent of the Vienna Neue Freie Presse, Baron Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, with whom she made a three-year tour of the world, singing everywhere and everywhere well received.
