Maxine Elliot Stellman Caruso (May 13, 1906 – June 24, 1972) was an American opera singer, a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera in the 1930s and 1940s.
Early life and education Stellman was from Brattleboro, Vermont, the daughter of Wilhelm Elliot Stellman and Lillian Lucinda Miller Stellman. Her father was a machine manufacturer. She graduated from Juilliard in 1934. She stayed at Juilliard for graduate studies with Belle Julie Soudant, Marcella Sembrich and Florence Page Kimball.
Career Stellman was a featured soloist with the Chautauqua Institution's symphony orchestra as a young woman. She was the female winner of the 1937 Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air, a talent contest program which awarded a cash prize and a singing role in a spring production.
Stellman's appearances with the Metropolitan Opera included soprano roles in Orfeo ed Euridice (1936), The Man Without a Country (1937), Aïda (1938),Taubman, H. Howard. "Role of Aida Sung by Zinka Milanov" The New York Times (February 3, 1938): 18. Madama Butterfly (1940), Die Walküre (1940), Il Trovatore and The Marriage of Figaro (1941), Manon (1942), Lohengrin (1942),"Stellman Wins Ovation As an Emergency Elsa" The New York Times (March 20, 1942): 24. via TimesMachine Louise (1943), Tannhäuser (1943), Carmen (1943), La Traviata (1943), The Magic Flute (1945), Rigoletto (1945), Der Rosenkavalier (1945), Lakmé (1946), Faust (1947), Hansel and Gretel (1947), and Lucia di Lammermoor (1950)."Conley Sings Role of Edgardo", The New York Times (February 10, 1950): 32. She also toured with Met productions, and was regularly heard in the Metropolitan Opera's radio broadcasts in the 1940s. She made national headlines when she was called in to sing "Elsa" in Lohengrin in Boston in 1942, a role she had never performed before, when Astrid Varnay fell ill.
Personal life In 1933, Maxine Stellman married fellow opera singer Joseph W. Caruso, a Sicilian-born tenor with the Metropolitan Opera. The Carusos owned the William Harris House in Brattleboro, one of the oldest buildings in Vermont.William Harris House, nomination form, National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service. She died in 1972, at the age of 66.
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