Career
She spent her childhood in Buffalo, New York and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery there. She created the role of Zita in Giacomo Puccini"s Gianni Schicchi at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918. She was also memorable as Amelia, the nagging, shrewish wife of West.C. Fields in lieutenant"s a Gift (1934).
She appeared in two other films of West.C. Fields: You"re Telling Maine! (1934) and Manitoba on the Flying Trapeze (1935).
Howard was part of the repertory system in the opera houses of Metz and Darmstadt previous to World War I. She told of her life as an opera singer in an autobiography, Confessions of an Opera Singer (Knopf 1918). Howard died on April 15, 1956, aged 71, of undisclosed causes, in Hollywood, California.
Howard appears to have not made as many opera recordings for companies of the acoustical era such as did her contemporaries Geraldine Farrar and Mary Garden. Her few recordings were vertical-cut discs made for the American branch of Pathé Frères in 1918 which received limited distribution.
Among them are Harry Burleigh"s arrangement of the spiritual "Deep River," arias from Charles Gounod"s Faust and Giuseppe Verdi"s Il Trovatore (in English), and the "Barcarolle" from Jacques Offenbach"s Les contes d"Hoffmann with Claudia Muzio (in French).