Zelie De Lussan by C F Conley

ZELIE DE LUSSAN
(21 December 1861 – 18 December 1949)
American Soprano

Zélie de Lussan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to French parents , her mother was a soprano ,training with her mother, de Lussan made her operatic début in 1884 in Boston, Massachusetts, as Arline in Balfe's The Bohemian Girl.Augustus Harris engaged her to appear in the first season under his management at Covent Garden, London, and as Carmen she made the part "peculiarly her own."
In London her successes included Zerlina in Don Giovanni, and, in 1897, Musetta in London's first performances of La bohème. Her singing greatly impressed Queen Victoria, and she was more than once invited to sing at BaImoral and Windsor Castle In 1894 she made her début at the Metropolitan Opera as Carmen, and appeared there for three seasons in roles including Nannetta (Falstaff), Zerlina, and Nedda (Pagliacci). In 1910 she sang Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro in Thomas Beecham's Mozart season at His Majesty's Theatre .After her marriage in 1907 to the pianist Angelo Fronani she gradually retired, though she played Carmen as late as 1915