EMMA NEVADA

'Emma Nevada' was the stage name of Emma Wixom (1859-1940), an American opera singer of the end of the nineteenth century. She was born Feb. 7, 1859 in mining camp Alpha in the Sierra Nevada mountains above Nevada City, California, the daughter of William Wallace Wixom, a physician, and Maria O’Boy. In the spring of 1864 the family moved to the new boom town of Austin, Nevada, where Emma’s love of singing manifested itself. Because of the limited opportunities for musical training in Austin, Dr. Wixom enrolled his daughter in Mills Seminary (now Mills College) in Oakland, California, which at the time was popular with young ladies from prosperous families in the boom towns of Nevada and California. There she began serious voice training with a German voice coach, Alfred Kelleher, finishing her course of study in May, 1875, but remaining another year for further study.
In March of 1877 Emma Wixom joined a tour group led by the naturalist Dr. Adrian Ebell, who each spring took a group of young women to Europe, either to study or to visit cultural sites. Unfortunately he died just before the ship reached Hamburg, and Emma and the others were on their own. She made her way to Vienna and studied three years with the famous voice teacher Mathilde Marchesi, making her formal debut May 17, 1880 at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in the role of Amina in ''La Sonnambula'', which was to be one of her favorite and most performed roles.
After this engagement Emma sang in several cities in Italy. Verdi heard her in Genoa, and praised her highly, engaging her for La Scala, where she gave twenty-one performances. In 1883 she was at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and at the Théâtre Italien in 1884. In November 1884 she began a coast-to-coast tour of the United States with the opera company put together by Col. Mapleson, alternating performances with Adelina Patti.
Emma made three more concert tours to the United States: 1885-86, 1899, and 1901-1902. In between she sang in the major opera houses in Europe, and was a favorite of Queen Victoria and Queen Maria Cristina of Spain. Her last tour included Pablo Casals, whom she had already introduced to the French and English musical public. In 1885 she married an English physician, Dr. Raymond Palmer. The next year they had a daughter, Mignon, who also became an opera singer. She left the stage in 1910 and died near Liverpool, England June 20, 1940.
Emma Nevada had a high, flute-like voice that however lacked power. She excelled in Italian operas such as ''La Sonnambula'' and ''Lucia di Lammermoor'', and in the operas of Ambroise Thomas and Léo Delibes, especially in scenes of pathos. One reviewer wrote of her that “her notes seemed like the echoes of those of the flute which accompanied her, and sometimes one confounded the trills of that instrument with her vocalization.”

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