Charlotte Maconda

Charlotte Maconda (March 12, 1863 – May 15, 1952) was an American soprano singer.

Charlotte Maconda, from a 1904 brochure.

Early life

Charlotte Maconda Maginnis was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the daughter of William Henry Maginnis and Jenette Morgan Whittlesey Maginnis. She was named for her maternal grandmother, Charlotte Maconda Morgan Whittlesey (1805-1865), who helped her husband Oramel Whittlesey (1801-1876) to found Music Vale Seminary in Salem, Connecticut.[1][2] She studied voice with Emma Fursch-Madi.[3]

Sculptor Bela Pratt was Charlotte Maconda Maginnis's first cousin.[1]

Career

Early in her career, she was sometimes billed as "Carlotta Maconda",[4][5] and toured as a member of the Boston Ideal Opera Company from 1888 to 1890, in the same cast as Jessie Bartlett Davis.[6][7] In 1890 she sang in the operas Der Freischütz, Mignon, Les Huguenots, and L'Africaine, with the Emma Juch Grand English Opera Company.[8][9][10] Maconda sang at the Metropolitan Opera House twice in 1899.[11] In 1903-1904 she and Max Bendix toured with several others as the Maconda Concert Company.[12] "Maconda has such unusual personal magnetism, in addition to a voice of delightful quality," reported a 1907 magazine, "that she quickly becomes a favorite wherever she sings."[13]

In 1910, she traveled to Havana, Cuba to sing in La Bohème at the city's new opera house.[14] Among her students in the 1920s was Daisy Pettit Elgin of Texas.[15]

Personal life

Charlotte Maconda married theatrical manager William Wellington Walters[16] in 1894.[1] "In private life Madame Maconda has no striking peculiarities to make her remarkable," opined a 1907 newspaper writer. "When she is not filling concert and orchestral engagements she lives quietly in New York with her husband."[17] She died in 1952, aged 89 years, in New York City.

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References
  1. C. B. Whittelsey, Genealogy of the Whittelsey-Whittlesey family (1898): 171.
  2. Cindy Lee Corriveau, Salem (Arcadia Publishing 2006): 45. ISBN 9780738539454
  3. "Charlotte Maconda" New York Times (December 19, 1897): 51. via Newspapers.com
  4. "Gilmore is Coming" Democrat and Chronicle (March 8, 1888): 4. via Newspapers.com
  5. Untitled music news item, The Buffalo Commercial (October 20, 1888): 4. via Newspapers.com
  6. "Albaugh's Holliday Street Theatre" Baltimore Sun (November 9, 1888): 1. via Newspapers.com
  7. "The Bostonians: 'Suzette'" Detroit Free Press (December 27, 1889): 4. via Newspapers.com
  8. Untitled music news item, The Tennessean (September 30, 1890): 5. via Newspapers.com
  9. "The Stage" Detroit Free Press (September 20, 1890): 8. via Newspapers.com
  10. "A Great Rendition" The Pittsburgh Press (December 6, 1890): 3. via Newspapers.com
  11. Charlotte Maconda, Archives, Metropolitan Opera Family.
  12. Maconda Concert Company (1903-1904) brochure, Redpath Chautauqua Collection, Iowa Digital Library.
  13. "Madame Charlotte Maconda Coming" Up-to-the-Times (October 1907): 535.
  14. "Mme. Maconda Sings in Havana" New York Times (October 15, 1910): 9. via Newspapers.com
  15. Laurie E. Jasinski, ed., The Handbook of Texas Music (Texas A&M University Press 2012). ISBN 9780876112977
  16. "Maconda and Flonzaley Quartet in St. Louis" Musical Courier (February 12, 1908): 34.
  17. "Musical" Salt Lake Tribune (October 27, 1907): 41. via Newspapers.com
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