Marie Engle

Marie Engle
Engle, by Aimé Dupont, 1895
Born	c. 1860 Chicago, Illinois, United States
Died	1953 Portsmouth, England
Occupation	Operatic mezzo-soprano
Known for	Early recording by Gianni Bettini

Marie Engle (c.  1860 – 1953) was an American operatic mezzo-soprano who performed in the United States and Europe in the late 19th century. She retired twice during her career, once at the behest of her then husband in the late 1880s. She returned to the opera in the spring of 1895, notably performing several years later at the Teatro Real just weeks before the outbreak of the Spanish–American War. She retired again in the late 1890s to take care of her sick father in Michigan. Critics praised her stage presence and technical expertise as a vocalist. Selections of her work were recorded by Gianni Bettini as part of the first phonograph cylinders of opera singers offered for sale in a catalog. After her father's death, she left the United States for England.

Engle was born around 1860 in Chicago, Illinois.^[a][6] She was raised in Chicago with one brother, Charles.^[7] Her father, Christian Engle, came to the United States and settled in Michigan. Christian's father was from Prussia, and his mother was the French prima donna Marie Stoll. Christian later married Augusta Merrill, a singer of Irish and English heritage. Augusta died when Marie was young, but before her death, she requested her daughter to sing for her.^[8]

Her father was a successful brewer in St. Louis,^[9] and later worked as a private secretary for Albert Allison Munger, heir to the Wesley Munger grain elevator company. He also helped plan her musical education.^[10] She studied under Anna Frederika Magnusson Jewett^[11] and Adelina Murio-Celli d'Elpeux.^[12] At age 14, she performed at the Academy of Music in New York. Before her marriage, she was accompanied by her father on tour for most of her career.^[8]

James Henry Mapleson heard Engle perform at the Academy and took her under his management. She debuted in 1886 at the Grand Opera House in San Francisco as Philine in Mignon by Ambroise Thomas.^[13] The following year, she appeared in the opera season at Drury Lane in London under the management of Augustus Harris, where she performed as the Queen in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, Adalgisa in Bellini's Norma, and Cherubino in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.^[12]

She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1895, appearing as Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen and Baucis in Gounod's Philémon et Baucis.^[14] Under director Maurice Grau, Engle performed in three grand opera productions in the winter of 1898 at Chicago's Auditorium Theatre: as Cherubino, Lady Harriet Durham in an Italian version of Flotow's Martha, and the Queen in Les Huguenots.^[15]

Three years later, she made a notable appearance at the Teatro Real, an event widely covered in the newspapers of the time. Just several months after the sinking of the Maine and only weeks before the outbreak of the Spanish–American War, Engle performed as Ophelia in Hamlet by Thomas. Due to the political situation, she received a chilly reception from an unforgiving and hypercritical Spanish audience. In the opening act, there was no reaction at all to her performance, only silence. By the second act, shouts of "Americana" began, followed by hissing, which continued until the final act. In spite of the poor reception, she managed to win the audience over to loud cheers and approval by the end.^[16]

In the late 1890s, the problem of acoustic cylinder duplication was solved using the pantograph, allowing phonograph cylinders to be copied and sold. Gianni Bettini recorded some of the first opera singers for commercial release at the Bettini Phonograph Laboratory in the Judge Building on Fifth Avenue, including Engle. Bettini made Engle's recordings available for wider purchase through his catalog, making her voice one of the earliest to be commercially recorded and sold to home listeners.^[17] She was listed as artist No. 21 in the 1897 and 1898 Bettini catalog, which offered a recording of her singing the Polonaise ("Je suis Titania") from Mignon priced at $3.50 ($132.29 in 2024).^[18]

Engle married her manager, Gustav Amburg, then the manager of the Bowery Theatre, in 1889.^[1] During their marriage, she was frequently occupied with preparing for performances or touring.^[12] Engle's husband was abusive towards her,^[1] making their relationship difficult.^[19] She temporarily retired from the opera for several years at his request.^[12]

During this period, Engle cared for a white Angora cat named Mizzi. The cat was immortalized in the painting Kitty's Birthday by artist Nelson N. Bickford. The painting gained popularity through journalist Helen M. Winslow's book Concerning Cats (1900)^[20] and was later noted by writer Carl Van Vechten.^[21]

In 1896, Engle divorced Amburg after learning he had a second wife in Germany.^[1] She spoke about her work in several interviews, noting that it was a difficult career. "We cannot all win, to be sure", she told one reporter, "and the few who attain success well deserve it."^[14] She ended her opera career to care for her ill father in Michigan, who died in 1899.^[10] She was later said to have converted to Catholicism.^[22] In 1912, The New York Times reported that Engle was living in Brighton.^[7]

Engle died in 1953 at the age of 92 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, England.^[23]

According to music critic William Armstrong, Engle was once regarded as one of the most beautiful opera singers of her time and was also technically proficient.^[22] During her career, critical reviews noted that her voice was not known for its projection or its timbral richness, but rather for its clean tone, precise intonation, and effortless agility, and for her unique approach to the lyric coloratura, in particular her ability to execute trills.^[6] Another reviewer wrote that Engle was "gifted with considerable personal attraction, a beautiful mezzo-soprano organ, and a singularly correct ear."^[12]