Estelle Liebling

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. 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. 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 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.

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. 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.

From January through July 1903 Liebling toured Europe with Sousa, performing much of the same repertoire she had performed earlier with the band.

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.

Liebling began teaching singing and coaching singers in the 1910s, and continued to do so for over 50 years. She published several influential vocal pedagogy texts, including the four-volume method book The Estelle Liebling Vocal Course (1956) with each volume focusing on a different voice type and following a vocal course divided into three parts: "vocal mechanism", "vocal studies", and "diction". Much of the pedagogy espoused by Liebling in these volumes is comparable to the pedagogy articulated by Marchesi in her Méthode de chant théorique et pratique (1887), and provides a written record of Liebling's continuation of Marchesi's pedagogical approach.

Beverly Sills, her most famous opera student, began her studies with Liebling in 1936 when she was just 7 years old. Sills continued to study with her up until Liebling's death 34 years later, and she described her as a demanding teacher who was strict and formal in lessons, but could also be incredibly kind and maintained an excellent sense of humor. |group= n Next morning at seven o'clock my telephone rang. It was Miss Liebling. 'Beverly,' she said sternly, 'that trill in the Jewel Song was very sloppy and slow. I expect you over here by ten o'clock.' I had to agree - the trill had been sloppy and slow. Exhausted as I was that morning after the performance, I got dressed, went to her studio, spent forty-five minutes with her trilling, and when I walked out I had a damned good trill.

Entertainers outside opera and other famous pupils

Adele Astaire Vivienne Segal Garfield Swift "The Blue Danube", as sung by Mme. Amelita Galli-Curci" by composer Johann Strauss II (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1929) "Se saran rose" ("Springtime Waltz Song") by Luigi Arditi (G. Schirmer, Inc., 193?) "Ah! Je veux vivre" from the opera Romeo et Juliette by Charles Gounod (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1937) "II Bacio" by Luigi Arditi (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1937) "Les filles de Cadix" by Léo Delibes with English text by Alfred de Musset (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1938) "Ardon gli incensi" from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1938) "Nobles seigneurs, salut" from the opera Les Huguenots by Giacomo Meyerbeer (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1938) "None he loves but me - Swiss Echo Song" by Karl A.F. Eckert (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1938) "Una voce poco fa" from the opera The Barber of Seville by Rossini (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1938) "Caro nome che il mio cor" from the opera Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1939) "Carnival of Venice" by Julius Benedict (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1939) "Mother Dear", Polish folk song with English words by Yvonne Ravell (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1939) "Souvenir Waltz", arrangement of Johann Strauss II's Souvenir de Nizza, Op. 200 for coloratura soprano and piano with text by Vera Bloom "Bocherini, Liebling Minuet", an adaptation of the minuet from Luigi Boccherini's String Quintet in E major, Op. 11, No. 5 for coloratura soprano (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1939) "Chant de l'almée" by Léo Delibes with English text by Philippe Gille (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1939) "Theme and Variations, Op. 164." by Heinrich Proch (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1940) Bravura Variations by Adolphe Adam (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1941) "Ecstacy" by Luigi Arditi (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1941) "No quiero casarme" (No, I'd rather be single), Spanish Folk Song (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1941) "The Queen of Night's Vengeance Aria" ("Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen") from Mozart's opera The Magic Flute (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1941) Thirty Vocalises for High or Medium Voice, op. 32 by Mathilde Marchesi (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1941) "Ah! non credea mirarti ... Ah. non giunge" from the opera La Sonnambula by Vincenzo Bellini (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1942) "Allons vite ... Ombre légère" from the opera Dinorah by Meyerbeer (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1942) "Chacun le sait" from the opera from the opera La Fille du Régiment by Donizetti (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1942) "Par le rang et par l'opulence" from the opera La Fille du Régiment by Donizetti (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1942) "Ah! tardai troppo ... O luce di quest' anima" from the opera Linda di Chamounix by Donizetti (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1942) "Ah, fors' e lui che l'anima" from the opera La traviata by Verdi (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1942) "Vocal Studies in Bravura", six vocalises by Francesco Lamperti (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1942) "Sorta è la notte ... Ernani, involami!" from the opera Ernani by Verdi (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1943) "Qui la voce" from the opera I Puritani by Bellini (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1944) "Au bord du chemin ... Voix légère" from the opera Les noces de Jeannette by Victor Massé (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1944) "Should He Upbraid" by Henry Bishop (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1944) "Voci di Primavera - Waltz Song by Johann Strauss II (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1944) "Mercè, dilette amiche" from the opera I vespri siciliani by Verdi (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1946) "Son verain vezzosa" from the opera I Puritani Bellini (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1946) "O légère hirondelle" from the opera Mireille by Charles Gounod (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1947) "C'est bien l'air que chaque matin" from the opera L'étoile du nord by Meyerbeer (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1948) "Confiado Gilguerillo" from the opera Acis y Galatea by José de Cañizares (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1955) "I'll Be No Submissive Wife" by George Alexander Lee (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1955) "O riante nature" from the opera Philémon et Baucis by Charles Gounod (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1957) "The Legend of the Violin", an adaptation of Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 5 for voice and piano with English text by her pupil Ralph Blane (G. Schirmer, Inc., 1958)