PARA °PAR@ ` áTEXT ` ÆHomer, Louise Dilworth Beatty1871╨1947opera singerBorn on April 30, 1871, in Shadyside (now part of Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, Louise Beatty grew up there and from 1882 in West Chester. After graduating from high school she helped support her family by working in Philadelphia as a secretary in a Quaker school and then as a court stenographer. Singing was an avocation until 1893, when she moved to Boston to pursue musical studies seriously. She became a member of the famous choir of the First Universalist Church there and was introduced to the world of opera by one of her teachers, the composer Sidney Homer, whom she married in January 1895. In 1896 they traveled to Paris, where she studied under FidÅle Koenig. A successful concert appearance was followed by her operatic debut in La Favorita at Vichy in June 1898. She sang at Angers in the 1898╨1899 season, at Covent Garden, London, in the summer of 1899, in Brussels in 1899╨1900, and again at Covent Garden in 1900. Maurice Grau, manager of the Metropolitan Opera of New York, was impressed by her full, wide-ranging, and dramatic contralto and signed her to a three-year contract in 1900. She remained with the Met for 19 years. Homer╒s American debut occurred with the Metropolitan company in San Francisco in Aòda in November 1900, and a month later she made her New York debut in the same opera. Her astounding ability to learn a new role quickly was demonstrated when she replaced Ernestine Schumann-Heink in Tristan und Isolde on ten days╒ notice in San Francisco in December 1901, in her singing Tannhèuser in St. Louis with no orchestral rehearsal in the same month, and when she stepped into a 1903 production of Das Rheingold on a day╒s notice. Other notable performances were in Rigoletto on the night of Enrico Caruso╒s American debut in November 1903, the American premiere of Hènsel und Gretel in November 1905, the Metropolitan╒s first production of Madame Butterfly, with Geraldine Farrar (and with Puccini himself present) in February 1907, in Aòda in Arturo Toscanini╒s American debut in November 1908, and in Orfeo ed Euridice with Alma Gluck in December 1909. A perennial favorite with audiences was her performance opposite Caruso in Samson et Dalila. Homer╒s greatest popularity came not from the stage, however, but from her second career as a recording artist. Beginning as early as 1902 she recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company, first on cylinders and later on disks. Arias, oratorio selections, hymns, and ballads recorded by her were enormously popular: in 1919 alone, over 332,000 copies of 69 recorded selections were sold. Among her most popular recordings were duets and quartets with Alma Gluck, Geraldine Farrar, Caruso, and others. After leaving the Met in 1919 she sang four seasons, 1922╨1926, with the Chicago Opera, made guest appearances with companies in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and made numerous concert and festival appearances. Her final performance at the Met was in Il Trovatore in March 1929. She gave up recording in the same year and devoted herself thereafter to the care of her ailing husband and her family. She died in Winter Park, Florida, on May 6, 1947. styl ` & ! ¬ 5¬ ( 5¬ 6 !I !I * !I ╖ 5¬ ╕ !I
