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Clara Louise Kellogg, 1842-1916
Born Sumterville [now Sumter], South Carolina
At a time when opera was dominated by European stars, American soprano Clara Louise Kellogg emerged as a significant, homegrown talent. Kellogg received her vocal training in New York City, where she made her formal debut as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto at the Academy of Music on February 27, 1861. When the public's taste for entertainment faltered at the start of the Civil War, Kellogg and impresario Max Maretzek brought audiences back to the theater with a rousing, if unconventional, production of Donizetti's La Figlia del Reggimento that featured American patriotic songs and actual Zouaves. Two years later, in the New York City premier of Gounod's Faust, the young singer scored a triumph with her performance as Marguerite -- a role the New York Times praised as suiting Kellogg's voice "to perfection," adding, "there is not a note in it that could be sung more truthfully or with better effect."
Mathew Brady Studio, print from c. 1863 wet collodion negative |