1641) Ljuba Welitsch

Ljuba Welitsch (born Veličkova; 1913 – 1996). Operatic soprano. She was born in Borisovo, Bulgaria, studied in Sofia and Vienna, and sang in opera houses in Austria and Germany in the late 1930s and early and mid-1940s. In 1946 she became an Austrian citizen.
Welitsch became best known in the title role of Richard Strauss's Salome, in which she was coached by the composer. Her international career was short, its start delayed by the Second World War and its end hastened by vocal problems. It took off in 1947 in London and continued in New York from 1949, but her starring days were over by the mid-1950s. Her international career was just before the days when complete studio recordings of operas were common, and although some live recordings survive from broadcasts, her recorded legacy is not extensive.
From the mid-1950s, Welitsch sang character roles in operas and acted in stage plays. She also featured in 21 film between 1953 and 1976.

- "Welitsch not only looked young and glamorous with her gorgeous red hair, but she sounded like a beautiful teenager..." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-ljuba-welitsch-5601321.html

- "Welitsch’s flaming red hair, “silvery-sounding voice,” and charismatic persona..." https://www.metopera.org/discover/archives/notes-from-the-archives/from-the-archives-salome-at-the-met/

- "Known for her red hair and exuberant vivacity..." https://opera-guide.ch/highlights/show_record.php?id=76&uilang=en&iframe=true

 

1524) Nellie Melba

Dame Nellie Melba (born Helen Porter Mitchell; 1861 – 1931). Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early 20th century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town.

Melba studied singing in Melbourne and made a modest success in performances there. After a brief and unsuccessful marriage, she moved to Europe in search of a singing career. Failing to find engagements in London in 1886, she studied in Paris and soon made a great success there and in Brussels. Returning to London she quickly established herself as the leading lyric soprano at Covent Garden from 1888. She soon achieved further success in Paris and elsewhere in Europe, and later at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, debuting there in 1893. Her repertoire was small; in her whole career she sang no more than 25 roles and was closely identified with only ten. She was known for her performances in French and Italian opera, but sang little German opera.

During the First World War, Melba raised large sums for war charities. She returned to Australia frequently during the 20th century, singing in opera and concerts, and had a house built for her near Melbourne. She was active in the teaching of singing at the Melbourne Conservatorium. Melba continued to sing until the last months of her life and made a large number of "farewell" appearances. Her death, in Australia, was news across the English-speaking world, and her funeral was a major national event. The Australian $100 note features her image.

 

- "Neither depicts the young Melba, with the electricity of her auburn hair and lively eyes, her majestic profile and frank mouth..." https://mahlerfoundation.org/.../contempora.../nellie-melba/

 

- "You cannot tell from the black and white images here that this lady had auburn hair nor that she was highly spirited with sparkling eyes..." https://www.pittwateronlinenews.com/dame-nellie-melba-at...

 

 

1360) Anna Case

Anna Case (1888/89 – 1984). American operatic soprano. She recorded with Thomas Alva Edison, who used her voice extensively in "tone tests" of whether a live audience could tell the difference between the actual singer and a recording. In addition to recordings for Edison Records on both phonograph cylinder and Diamond Disc, Case recorded for Victor and Columbia Records, and made sound film for Vitaphone.

 

- "Moreover, Anna Case was exquisite to behold, long-limbed in white satin, her auburn hair piled high..." https://books.google.it/books?id=psyU-xaGwxEC&pg=PA338...

 

 

1326) Marie-Blanche Vasnier

Marie-Blanche Vasnier (1848 - ?). French soprano. She was the wife of Henri Vasnier (1832 - 1907), a prominent civil servant. At the end of 1880 she met the composer Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918) and soon became his mistress as well as his muse. Whether Vasnier was content to tolerate his wife's affair with the young student or was simply unaware of it is not clear, but he and Debussy remained on excellent terms, and he continued to encourage the composer in his career.
Debussy was greatly taken with her, and she inspired him to compose: he wrote 27 songs dedicated to her during their seven-year relationship.
Marie Vasnier ended her liaison with Debussy soon after his final return from Rome, although they remained on good enough terms for him to dedicate to her one more song, "Mandoline", in 1890.

- "Such was the case with a beautiful redhead with green eyes, Marie Vasnier..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "... where he met Madame Marie-Blanche Vasnier, a high coloratura soprano with striking red hair and green eyes."  https://search.proquest.com/…/f3e3d20734f75019f1a75a84ed…/1…

- "But Marie Vasnier, a striking redhead with green eyes and a high, agile soprano voice, returned Debussy’s interest and they were lovers for some years..."  https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp…

 - "Her hair was red to brown and she sang with a lovely light voice to professional standard."  https://www.rodoni.ch/OPERNHAUS/pelleas/Debussy2.pdf

1324) Georgette Leblanc

Georgette Leblanc (1869 – 1941). French operatic soprano, actress, author, and sister of novelist Maurice Leblanc (creator of Arsène Lupin). She became particularly associated with the works of Jules Massenet and was an admired interpreter of the title role in Bizet's Carmen.
For many years Leblanc was the lover of Belgian playwright and writer Maurice Maeterlinck, and he wrote several parts for her within his stage plays. She portrayed the role of Ariane in Ariane et Barbe-bleue, both in the original 1899 stage play by Maeterlinck and in the 1907 opera adaptation by Paul Dukas. Leblanc also appeared in a couple of French films, most notably L'Inhumaine in 1924. In the last few decades of her life she turned to writing, producing two commercially successful autobiographies and several children's books and travelogues.

- "Her hair is wonderfully red, the mask of her face a peculiarly expressive one."  https://books.google.it/books…

1250) Marni Nixon

Margaret Nixon McEathron (1930 – 2016), known professionally as Marni Nixon. American soprano and ghost singer for featured actresses in movie musicals. She is now recognized as the singing voice of leading actresses on the soundtracks of several musicals, including Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, although her roles were concealed from audiences when the films were released.

Besides her voice work in films, Nixon's career included roles of her own in film, television, opera and musicals on Broadway and elsewhere throughout the United States, performances in concerts with major symphony orchestras and recordings.
Mother of singer and musician Andrew Gold. 

- "The red‐haired singer, who was married formerly to Ernest Gold..."  https://www.nytimes.com/…/marni-nixon-is-singing-for-hersel…

- "When Marni was seven, conductor Moldrem got a call from Republic Pictures, looking for a red-haired little girl who could play the violin. The outcome was Marni’s first film..."  https://masterworksbroadway.com/artist/marni-nixon/

- “She got out of her car with her red hair and they all screamed..."  https://www.thedailybeast.com/remembering-marni-nixon-the-i…

- "Such purported secrecy meant that the red-haired, blue-eyed Nixon..."  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/marni-nixon-p8n6cbxn9

955) Sibyl Sanderson

Sibyl Sanderson (also spelt Sybil, 1864 – 1903). American operatic soprano during the Parisian Belle Époque.
She was Jules Massenet's favorite soprano and appeared in the premieres of a number of his operas, the roles having been created for her unique talents (her professional debut took place in Paris in the title role in Esclarmonde). She was also a famous interpreter of Manon, Massenet's most enduring opera.
Sanderson was also admired by Camille Saint-Saëns, who wrote the title role in Phryné for her. Success outside of Paris was elusive for Sanderson; she appeared at Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera (debut in title role of Manon on January 16, 1895, the last performance as Juliette in Roméo et Juliette on December 31, 1901) to lackluster reviews.
In 1897 she married a Cuban millionaire and sugar heir Antonio E. Terry (d. 1899), after which she temporarily halted her operatic activity, making an unsuccessful comeback two years later.

- "At the Metropolitan it had been sung exclusively by a red-haired American from the Ecole Marchesi called Sybil Sanderson."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "That beautiful American with red hair would become his favorite performer."   https://www.francemusique.com/…/10-little-you-perhaps-do-no…

936) Geraldine Farrar

Alice Geraldine Farrar (1882 – 1967). American soprano opera singer and film actress, noted for her beauty, acting ability, and "the intimate timbre of her voice."
She recorded extensively for the Victor Talking Machine Company and was often featured prominently in that firm's advertisements. She was one of the first performers to make a radio broadcast in a 1907 publicity event singing over Lee De Forest's experimental AM radio transmitter in New York City. She also appeared in silent movies, which were filmed between opera seasons. Farrar starred in more than a dozen films from 1915 to 1920, including Cecil B. De Mille's 1915 adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, for which she was extensively praised. One of her other notable screen roles was as Joan of Arc in the 1917 film Joan the Woman.
Farrar had a seven-year love affair with the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. She was close friends with the star tenor Enrico Caruso and there has been speculation that they too had a love affair, but no conclusive evidence of this has surfaced. It is said that Caruso coined her motto: Farrar farà ("Farrar will do it").

- "... rather than use a wig she had her famous long red hair cut off."  https://books.google.it/books…

935) Olive Fremstad

Olive Fremstad (1871 – 1951). Stage name of Anna Olivia Rundquist, a celebrated Swedish-American opera diva who sang in both the mezzo-soprano and soprano ranges.

- "On her dark red hair, short and wind-tossed..."  https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search…

- "Huneker, smitten by Fremstad's auburn hair and deep-set blue eyes..."  https://books.google.it/books…

891) Deanna Durbin

Edna Mae Durbin (1921 – 2013) known professionally as Deanna Durbin. Canadian-born actress and singer, later settled in France, who appeared in musical films in the 1930s and 1940s. With the technical skill and vocal range of a legitimate lyric soprano, she performed many styles from popular standards to operatic arias.
Durbin made her first film appearance with Judy Garland in Every Sunday (1936), and subsequently signed a contract with Universal Studios. Her success as the ideal teenaged daughter in films such as Three Smart Girls (1936) was credited with saving the studio from bankruptcy. In 1938, at the age of 17, Durbin was awarded the Academy Juvenile Award.
As she matured, Durbin grew dissatisfied with the girl-next-door roles assigned to her, and attempted to portray a more womanly and sophisticated style. The film noir Christmas Holiday (1944) and the whodunit Lady on a Train (1945) were, however, not as well received as her musical comedies and romances had been. Durbin retired from acting and singing in 1949, and withdrew from public life, granting no interviews for the remainder of her life, except for one in 1983. She married film producer-director Charles Henri David in 1950, and the couple moved to a farmhouse near Paris.

- "Those motion picture portraits of her flawless oval face, rich auburn hair, startling blue eyes..."  http://www.speakingofradio.com/pdf/0698_1.pdf

- "Her blue eyes, auburn hair and toothsome gaiety won the hearts of filmgoers without resorting to sexuality or coquetry."  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/o…/10031232/Deanna-Durbin.html

772) Joan Sutherland

Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, (1926 – 2010). Australian-born coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s.
She possessed a voice combining extraordinary agility, accurate intonation, "supremely" pinpoint staccatos, a trill and a tremendous upper register, although music critics often complained about the imprecision of her diction.
Sutherland was the first Australian to win a Grammy Award, for Best Classical Performance – Vocal Soloist (with or without orchestra) in 1962.
Along with her husband, she contributed to the international launch of Luciano Pavarotti, who described her as "the voice of the century".

- "You settle down, then turn face a huge pouf of red hair, and a mouth of red lipstick that has gone slightly askew beneath the right lower lip." https://www.nytimes.com/…/no-joans-not-jealous-no-joans-not…

- "There was something indomitable about the imperious jut of that chin, the big red hair..."  https://www.smh.com.au/…/farewell-la-stupenda-20101012-16hs…

- "Beautifully dressed in emerald-green, red hair carefully groomed..."   https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47509357

- "... the thick titian hair is now the color of ginger; the voice retains the soft accent of her native Australia."  https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search…

630) Praskovia Kovalyova

Praskovia Ivanovna Kovalyova-Zhemchugova also Kovaleva or Kovalyova, Kovaleva-Zhemchugova, Zhemchugova-Sheremeteva, and Sheremeteva or Sheremetyeva (1768 – 1803). Russian serf actress and soprano opera singer.
By the age of 17, she could read and write French and Italian fluently, played the harp and clavichord, and was acknowledged by her contemporaries for her operatic and dramatic abilities. In a career that spanned almost two decades, Praskovia performed in over a dozen operas, including Monsigny's Le déserteur and Aline, reine de Golconde, Paisiello's L'infante de Zamora, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Le Devin du village and Piccinni's La buona figliuola maritata.
Her most important role was Eliane in Grétry's opera Les Mariages samnites. Assuming the part for the first time in 1785, Praskovia sang Eliane for 12 years — a first in the history of serf theatre.
In the mid-1780s, Praskovya became the mistress of Count Nikolai Sheremetev, the impresario of the family serf theater.
At the height of the theatre's flowering in the late 1790s Praskovia became ill, possibly with consumption (tuberculosis), and was forced to retire.
In 1801 Nikolai and Praskovia married in Moscow in the strictest secrecy. Within months of their wedding Praskovia became pregnant. On February 3, 1803 she gave birth to a son, Dmitry, but pregnancy and childbirth destroyed her poor health and she died on February 23 at the Sheremetev palace in St. Petersburg.

- "With dark, expressive eyes, a pale complexion, auburn hair, and a slight, almost fragile build, she performed under the name of “the Pearl.” https://erenow.com/biographies/catherinethegreat/47.html