Rosemary Kuhlmann

Rosemary Kuhlmann (January 30, 1922 – August 17, 2019) was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and Broadway musical actress best known for originating the role of the Mother in Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera commissioned for television. Kuhlmann portrayed the role on the annual live NBC broadcast of the production from 1951 through 1962.

Early life and education Rosemary Kuhlmann was born in New York City. She attended high school in Staten Island, graduating in 1939. After graduating from high school she worked as a model for Lord & Taylor and then later as a secretary at Chase Manhattan. With the outbreak of World War II she joined the WAVES. While in the WAVES, Kuhlmann was sent to the University of Wisconsin–Madison where she and a hundred and ten other women learned Morse code for three months.

Kuhlmann then returned to New York and worked six days a week "sending Morse code to the ships at sea." She also performed on radio programs promoting the WAVES and soon had her own weekly show, Navy Serenade, on WNEW where she would sing popular songs of the day. After this production closed, she joined the ensemble of the 1951 Broadway musical revival of Music in the Air, directed by Oscar Hammerstein II. During this production, Kuhlmann was invited by Chandler Cowles, who had produced The Consul, to audition for Menotti for the part of the Mother in his new opera Amahl and the Night Visitors at the Mark Hellinger Theatre.

After the premiere of Amahl and the Night Visitors, Kuhlmann's career took off. In 1952, a few weeks after the premiere and the LP studio recording, Kuhlmann toured Europe with Menotti, once again playing the Secretary in The Consul. That same year, Kuhlmann made her debut with the New York City Opera in a stage production of Amahl and the Night Visitors. the title role in Bizet's Carmen, Meg Page in Verdi's Falstaff, Angelina in Gioacchino Rossini's La Cenerentola, Nicklausse in Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann and the Tsarina in The Golden Slippers.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Kuhlmann was a frequent guest artist with symphony orchestras and played Giorgetta on a CBC telecast of Puccini's Il Tabarro. She also starred in summer operettas in Dallas and St. Louis.