MARCELLA SEMBRICH

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 94, 15 January 1935, Page 9

MARCELLA SEMBRICH

4. Death of Prima Donna \ FAMOUS AUSTRIAN SINGER Marcella Sembrich, whose death in her 77th year is reported from New York, was half a century ago one of the world’s greatest operatic artists. Eight years older than Dame Nellie Melba, Sembrich was an established artist in London and on the Continent when Melba made her debut. Although tlie cable message announced her as Polish, she was not a Pole. Madame Sembrich was born at Lemberg, in Austria, being the daughter of Casimir Kochanski, a talented musician. When Marcella ventured on an operatic career she took her mother’s maiden name. She learned the piano and violin at four years of age, and at 12 was sufficiently proficient to assist in the support of tlie family liy her playing. Eventually' she became a student at the Lemberg Conservatoire of Music. At 19 years of age she married her teacher, Professor W. Stengel, who died on May 15, 1917. Sembrich made her debut as Elvira in “La Sonanibula” at Athens, in Greece, on June 3, 1877, and next year was engaged for the opera season at Dresden. Improving with each performance, she was heard at Covent Garden in 1880, when she made an indelible impression as Lucia. Her success in Donizetti’s opera was repeated in America, and at the Metropolitan Opera House she reigned in the ’SO'S and ’9o’s as Elvira, Violetta, Ophelia; Rosina and Gilda. Indeed, she held her own as a leading prima donna until the end of last century. She retired from the operatic stage in 1909, and from the concert platform seven years later.'