Tini's Life

Singers and actors usually tell silly stories about themselves. They have certain legends that must be preserved for their public and truth so much more fascinating than fiction in most of their cases is let to drop unnoticed by the wayside. So it is that most autobiographies of prima donnas make sorry reading, that the material they give their biographers simmers down usually to flimsy substance. But last week there was published a biography that proved the exception. Mary Lawton* wrote it, called it Schumann-Heink, the Last of the Titans.

"I am a soldier's daughter." It begins that simply. Then comes the story: Ernestine ("Tini") Rossler was an Austrian, born in Prague. But she lived her first years in Verona in the soldiers' barracks. The father was a "roughneck" but the mother was a lady, tired always, with poverty and childbearing. Tini herself was always hungry, used to skip school often to go to the circus people in the marketplace where she cleaned monkey cages in exchange for food. Soldiers change their stations often. It was in Graz that the Rosslers bought a decrepit piano for a dollar and Tini mended it with string and sealing wax; in a Graz convent that the Mother Superior gave her her first singing lessons; in Graz that she sang first in public--the contralto part in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony--earned $6 that bought a second-hand canary cage and the first white curtains that the Rosslers ever had. In Vienna young Ernestine, nearly grown up, tried first for opera but the director said "Mein Gott, what a face!" suggested a sewing machine. Only the roughneck father was glad. His Tini should have a decent career. But she fooled him, went to Dresden, brought back a contract signed by the King.

At the Dresden Opera Tini Rossler served her apprenticeship with promise of success. But then she married Ernst Heink and a burden of debts, lost her job. Then came four children, dark days. Heink deserted her. The sheriff took everything but a bed, three chairs, a stove, the children. Finally they had to be sent to her parents. Then came engagements in Berlin, Hamburg. A temperamental contralto balked and Heink got big roles, made them bigger. She married Paul Schumann, an actor. Together in 1898 they came to the U. S. In Chicago a month before another baby, she made her debut in Lohengrin. The baby was born in Manhattan--George Washington Schumann.

There followed the Golden Age at the Metropolitan, with such singers as Nordica, Pol Plancon, Fremstad, the de Reszkes and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. But when Impresario Maurice Grau left, Schumann-Heink left too, went into a comic opera called Love's Lottery. Then it was that Schumann died, that she married her secretary William Rapp "for protection" for herself, eight children. Grand opera took her back. She made music history in Austria, Germany, France, England, the U. S. with her Frecka, Erda, Magdelena, Brangane, Waltraeute. She divorced Rapp. Then came the War. One son died for Germany. The others fought for the U. S. So did Schumann-Heink, singing. Now she is on a farewell concert.

*Onetime actress. More recently author of The Lifetime of Mark Twain, Rosa Leurs, Queen of Cooks and Some Kings. Schumann-Heink is published by Macmillan ($5).