Helen Francesca Traubel (1903–1972)

One of the world’s great Wagnerian sopranos, Helen Traubel was born in south St. Louis on June 16, 1903. Her father, Otto Ferdinand Traubel, was a druggist. The family lived in a six-room flat above the store until Helen was six years old. During her years of childhood, she constantly focused on becoming a singer. Her parents often attended concerts and the opera with Helen. Her mother, Clara, had been a concert singer before her marriage and encouraged her daughter’s interest in music. By the time Helen was twelve she had heard more than thirty operas. Her musical instruction began with piano lessons. In her sophomore year she left high school to concentrate on studying voice. At age thirteen she started singing lessons with her first and only teacher, Louise Meyerson Vetta-Karst.

From the third grade, Traubel sang whenever and wherever the opportunity presented itself. She first sang professionally in a hall at Washington University, and she also sang in a local Catholic church choir. After fourteen months, at the insistence of her voice teacher, she stopped giving public performances and devoted herself to her vocal studies. When Traubel was seventeen, she began earning a living by singing at the Pilgrim Congregational Church and the United Hebrew Temple.

In 1924 Traubel appeared in concert with Rudolph Ganz and the St. Louis Symphony. Later she toured with the orchestra and in the summer of 1926 appeared at Lewisohn Stadium in New York, where Ganz was the guest conductor. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, heard her performance and invited her to join the Metropolitan. Traubel declined the offer and returned to St. Louis to continue her studies and her work as a soloist for religious services. Her refusal to enter a contract with the Metropolitan became a familiar pattern.

In 1934 Traubel was invited to be the featured soloist at the National Saengerfest to be held in St. Louis. Walter Damrosch, the well-known guest conductor, was so impressed with her voice that he invited her to appear in his new opera, The Man without a Country. After much persuasion and the creation of the role Mary Rutledge just for her, Traubel agreed to appear. In the spring of 1937 she made her operatic debut in this work at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The opera was not a success, and Traubel sang in only five performances. She stayed in New York, appearing on NBC Radio and studying with Giuseppe Boghetti. In 1938 she married William L. Bass, a real estate and investment broker who later became her manager. This was the second marriage for both. Traubel had married Louis Franklin Carpenter in 1922, but they divorced in 1936.

After many highly acclaimed appearances on the concert stage and involved negotiations with Edward Johnson, the general manager, Traubel signed with the Metropolitan for the 1939–1940 season. She appeared in her first Wagner role, as Sieglinde in Die Walkure, on December 28, 1939. Her performances at the Metropolitan launched her career as one of the foremost Wagnerian sopranos in modern times. Until 1941 she shared Wagnerian roles with Kirsten Flagstad, the Norwegian soprano and leading Wagnerian singer at the Metropolitan Opera. With the departure of Flagstad in 1941, Traubel became the company’s principal Wagnerian soprano. She remained with the Metropolitan for sixteen seasons, leaving at the end of the 1952–1953 season. During that time she appeared in ten different roles, in nine works, for 176 performances.

Traubel’s resignation from the Metropolitan Opera came as a result of a highly public clash with the general manager, Rudolf Bing. He believed her appearances in nightclubs, on radio, in films, and on television diminished her dignity and the Met’s. She replied that “artistic dignity is not a matter of where one sings. To assert that art can be found at Metropolitan Opera House but not in a night club is rank snobbery that underrates both the taste of the American public and the talents of its composers.”

Traubel now focused on appearances in concerts and nightclubs, on radio and television, in a Broadway musical, Pipe Dream, and in a motion picture, Deep in My Heart. Among the many artists she worked with were Groucho Marx, Jimmy Durante, Red Skelton, Ed Sullivan, Perry Como, Jerry Lewis, and Milton Berle. Traubel was a baseball fan, and in 1950 she became a part owner of the St. Louis Browns. That same year she briefly turned to writing. Her first full-length mystery novel, The Metropolitan Opera Murders, was published in October 1951. Critics gave it lukewarm reviews.

Traubel recorded for RCA-Victor and Columbia Records. She was the first singer to ever record with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony. She spent three years coaching Margaret Truman, daughter of the president, Harry Truman, who had asked for help in launching a singing career. Her last engagement was with Jimmy Durante in a hotel resort at Lake Tahoe, California, in 1964. Traubel died of a heart attack at her home in Santa Monica, California, on July 28, 1972.

During her lifetime Traubel received many awards and honors, among them honorary doctorates from the University of Missouri and the University of Southern California, the King Christian Medal of Liberation, and the Citation of Merit of the National Association for American Composers and Conductors. Throughout her life she was to remain true to her St. Louis roots. As Vincent Sheean wrote, “Helen Traubel was as American as Mark Twain.”