Estelle Liebling (April 21, 1880 – September 25, 1970) was an American soprano, composer, arranger, music editor, and celebrated voice teacher and vocal coach.
Born into the Liebling family of musicians, she began her professional opera career in Dresden as a leading coloratura soprano in 1898 when she was just 18 years old. She sang with several important opera houses in Europe, including the Opéra-Comique, the Semperoper, and the Staatsoper Stuttgart. From 1902 to 1904 she was committed to the Metropolitan Opera, and from 1902 to 1905 she toured internationally in more than 1,600 concerts with John Philip Sousa and his band. After her marriage in 1906, she performed only occasionally in the succeeding two decades.
Liebling began her teaching career in the 1910s, not stopping until her death more than 50 years later. Her pedagogy was rooted in the tradition of her teacher Mathilde Marchesi. She mainly taught out of her private studio in New York City, with the exception of three years working on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in the 1930s. During her career she was the vocal coach or voice teacher of 78 principal singers at the Met.
Many of her students were famous singers and entertainers or other public figures, including sopranos Beverly Sills, Amelita Galli-Curci, Maria Jeritza, Kitty Carlisle, and Margaret Truman; baritones Titta Ruffo and Alexander Sved; Wagnerian tenor Max Lorenz; dancer Adele Astaire; actresses Joan Crawford, Gertrude Lawrence, and Meryl Streep; socialite Irene Mayer Selznick; and Hollywood gossip queen Louella Parsons.
Liebling composed, edited, and arranged music for singers, most often for coloratura sopranos, but also for other voices. A prolific arranger and editor of vocal music for the music publisher G. Schirmer, Inc. and the author of several influential vocal pedagogy texts, she is considered one of the most influential voice instructors and vocal pedagogy authors of the 20th century.
In particular, her influence on the interpretation of coloratura soprano repertoire has had a lasting impact, with musicologist Sean M. Parr stating that Liebling "codified many traditional coloratura cadenzas".
Early life and opera career
Born into a Jewish family on 57th Street in New York City, Liebling was the daughter of composer Max Liebling (1845–1927) and Matilde Liebling (née de Perkiewicz). Her father and his three brothers, George, Emil, and Solly Liebling, were all pupils of Franz Liszt and had successful careers as pianists and composers. Two of her three brothers, James and Leonard Liebling, also worked professionally as musicians. Leonard was the editor of the Musical Courier for many years and had trained as a pianist with Leopold Godowsky. After initial studies as a pianist, she studied singing with soprano and vocal pedagogue Selma Nicklass-Kempner at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. Listening to advice from Nellie Melba, she continued further studies with Melba's teacher mezzo-soprano Mathilde Marchesi in Paris. She was a graduate of Hunter College.
Liebling made her professional opera debut in September 1900 at the Semperoper in Dresden as the title heroine in Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. She performed other coloratura soprano roles at that opera house, including Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville and the Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute. Speaking of her early experiences in Dresden to Quaintance Eaton of Opera News in 1969, Liebling stated: "The entire company apparently joined in a cabal against me because of an injudicious item printed by Henry Krehbiel in the New York Tribune to the effect that I would replace Erika Wedekind in Dresden. Marcella Sembrich, who lived there, snubbed me cruelly, and the conductor and singers would hardly speak to me. It took all my grit to carry through my debut as Lucia and subsequent performances as Queen of the Night and Rosina."
Liebling also performed leading roles with the Opéra-Comique and the Staatsoper Stuttgart before returning to the United States to make her debut at the Metropolitan Opera (Met) as Marguerite de Valois in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots on February 24, 1902. She returned to the Met in 1903 as Musetta in Puccini's La bohème with Marcella Sembrich as Mimì, Enrico Caruso as Rodolfo, Giuseppe Campanari as Marcello, and Arturo Vigna conducting. She was heard again at the Met in 1904 as a Flower Maiden in Richard Wagner's Parsifal and as the 2nd Genie in Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Work with Sousa Liebling became a favored soprano of John Philip Sousa after her manager, Henry Wolfsohn, managed to successfully promote her as an artist to him. Wolfsohn convinced Sousa to buy another singer out of her contract in order to engage Liebling for his 1902 fall tour. She first sang with Sousa and his band in Atlantic City for matinee and evening performances on Saturday, August 9, 1902, in which she performed Benjamin Godard’s Chanson de Florian, Alexander Alyabyev's Solovey, and the mad scene from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. She traveled throughout the United States and Europe as a soprano soloist with Sousa's band from 1902 to 1905 in over sixteen hundred concerts in nine tours. Her first tour was in the fall of 1902 for performances in the Midwestern United States. One of the stops on that tour was at Tomlinson Hall in Indianapolis in which she performed "The Bell Song" from Delibes' Lakmé, Sousa's The Snow Baby, and Solovey on September 18, 1902. The Indianapolis Sentinel review of the performance stated: "the audience had “save[d] its best applause for Miss Liebling” and that "Miss Liebling, who is vocal soloist this season for all of Sousa’s indoor concerts has the artistic temperament, is magnetic, is endowed with a pure soprano voice of exceptional range and adequate power, and is blessed with a most attractive stage presence. [She] displayed warmth, refinement, and finesse. No singer who has appeared in Indianapolis for many seasons has more easily and completely captivated her audience."
From January through July 1903 Liebling toured Europe with Sousa, performing much of the same repertoire she had performed earlier with the band. She was particularly admired for her performances of one new aria, "Charmant oiseau" from Felicien David’s La perle du Brésil which was a showpiece for both her coloratura soprano and Sousa band flutist Marshall Lufsky. The tour began with performances at the Queen's Hall in London from January 2 to 11. This was proceeded by performances in Brighton, Reading, Swindon, Stratford-on-Avon, and Leamington over the next five days. On January 17 a private performance was given at Warwick Castle for Francis Greville, 5th Earl of Warwick and Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick and their guests. On January 31 they performed for King Edward VII at Windsor Castle. Speaking of that experience, Liebling stated, " A command performance at Windsor Castle for King Edward VII was the thrill of my young life. We were punctual of course, but His Majesty dawdled over a pinochle game and didn't show up for what seemed hours. It was an all-American program except for our solos - my 'Charmant Oiseau' from David's Perle de Bresil and Maud Powell's 'Zigeunerweisen'. Maud was already considered the leading woman violin virtuoso in the world. The King asked for encores. Naturally the band played 'The Stars and Stripes Forever' - they were never allowed to get away without it. I used to stand in the wings and warm up by singing along with the flutes. Sousa always seemed amused."
Liebling and the Sousa band continued to perform in Britain through the middle of April and then proceeded to Paris where they performed a series of concerts beginning on April 19, 1903. This was followed by performances in other European cities in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Poland, and Russia over the next few months. They returned to Britain in July 1903 for performances in England, Ireland, and Wales for the conclusion of the European tour. A reviewer in the Burton Mail of Liebling's performance on her British tour stated: "[She] possesses a soprano voice of unusual brilliancy and flexibility, and with a very wide compass...clear flute-like quality...and she tripped up and down the chromatic scales and gave the trying staccato passages with no more apparent difficulty than the brilliant bird she was supposed to imitate."
After a month off, Liebling rejoined Sousa and his band for another fall tour in the United States which began in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, on August 30, 1903. Stops along this tour included appearances at the Cincinnati Fall Festival, the Indiana State Fair, and a concluding run at the Pittsburgh Exposition from September 29 through October 3, 1903. New performance repertoire sung by Liebling during this tour included Sousa’s Maid of the Meadow, Voices of Spring by Johann Strauss, the aria "A vos jeux, mes amis" from Thomas's Hamlet, the aria "Legere hirondelle" from Gounod's Mireille, Ethelbert Nevin's "Mighty Lak' a Rose", and "Go To Sleep, Slumber Deep" from Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland.
After half a year off, Liebling resumed touring with Sousa and his band in April 1904 for a nine-month-long tour of the United States. Some of the stops on this tour included the Parsons Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut; the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore; the Peck Theatre in Buffalo, New York; the St. Louis World's Fair; the Pittsburgh Exposition; the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota; the Grand Theatre in Sioux City Iowa; Convention Hall in Kansas City, Missouri; the Hazard's Pavilion in Los Angeles; and Carnegie Hall in New York City. Some new repertoire from the tour included Sousa's "Will You Love When the Lilies are Dead?"; a Sousa arrangement of the aria "O rianle nature" from Gounod's Philémon et Baucis; the aria "Una voce poco fa" from Rossini's The Barber of Seville; and the aria "Air du rossignol" from Victor Massé's Les noces de Jeannette. Reviews from this tour were mixed, with some reviewers highly complimentary and others commenting on Liebling's voice sounding tired and worn, or overpowered by Sousa's instrumentalists.
From January 6 through May 3, 1905, Liebling toured the British Isles with Sousa and his band. The tour commenced at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, and featured Liebling performing Isabella's aria from Ferdinand Hérold’s Le pre aux clercs with an added flute obbligato by Marshall Lufsky and a band arrangement by Herbert L. Clarke. Some of the other stops on this tour included the Queen’s Hall in London and County Hall in Salisbury. After returning to the United States, Sousa's band performed at the Metropolitan Opera House on May 21, 1905, with Liebling singing "Where is Love?" from Sousa's operetta Chris and the Wonderful Lamp. Her final appearances with Sousa's band in 1905 were at the New York Hippodrome on June 11 and 18; the same month in which her engagement to A. R. Mosler was announced. After this point, Liebling no longer toured with Sousa, but did occasionally perform with his band in singular guest appearances through 1908.
Later life and teaching career
In 1905 Liebling married the engineer Arthur Rembrandt Mosler, the son of painter Henry Mosler whose family owned the Mosler Safe Company. Mosler was wealthy, and the couple resided for many years in a luxurious penthouse at 145W 55th Street in the same building where Liebling later established her private voice studio on a lower floor.