:PAR@ ` óTEXT ` öKellogg, Clara Louise1842╨1916opera singerBorn on July 9, 1842, in Sumterville (now Sumter), South Carolina, Clara Kellogg grew up in Birmingham (now Derby) in her parents╒ native Connecticut and from about 1855 in New York City. From about fourteen she studied music and singing privately and at the Ashland Seminary and Musical Institute in the Cats kill Mountains. In 1860 she made an undistinguished concert and opera tour that ranged as far west as Detroit. She made her New York debut in February 1861 in a production of Rigoletto at the New York Academy of Music, and a week later she achieved some success in a Boston production of Donizetti╒s Linda di Chamounix. Despite the dampening effect of the Civil War she managed to build a career in the next few years, singing in La Sonnambula, La Fille du Regiment, and other operas, in Boston, Chicago, and other cities. In November 1863 Kellogg sang Marguerite in the New York premiere of Gounod╒s Faust at the Academy of Music. The role was long identified with her, and in it she made her London debut at Her Majesty╒s Theatre in November 1867. From 1868 to 1873 she toured the major opera houses of America, in 1872 as co-star of an opera company organized by her and the Austrian prima donna Pauline Lucca. During 1873╨1876 she headed her own English Opera Company, a pioneering effort at presenting opera in English in which she closely supervised every detail. Thereafter she again toured as a solo artist in concert and opera performances, capped by a successful tour to Russia in 1880╨1881. Her career faded thereafter, owing perhaps to the inadequacy of her early training and the consequent early fading of her voice, especially in the upper register. In her prime, however, hers was a soprano of some power and beauty, and she was the first native American prima donna and the first to achieve success in Europe. In November 1887 she married impresario Carl Strakosch (nephew of the better known Max and Maurice Strakosch, the former of whom had been her manager) and shortly thereafter retired. In 1913 she published Memoirs of an American Prima Donna. She died in New Hartford, Connecticut, on May 13, 1916. vstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ . !I !I !I ô !I Ñ !I !I # !I % !I 9 !I u 5¬ v !I ─ !I ╔ !I 7 !I Y !I link `
