Hauk, Minnie (real name, Amalia Mignon Hauck)
Hauk, Minnie (real name, Amalia Mignon Hauck)
Hauk, Minnie (real name, Amalia Mignon Hauck), celebrated American soprano; b. N.Y., Nov. 16, 1851; d. Triebschen, near Lucerne, Switzerland, Feb. 6, 1929. Her father was a German carpenter who became involved in the political events of 1848, emigrated to America, and married an American woman; he named his daughter Mignon after the character in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. The family moved to Atchison, Kans., when Minnie was very young; her mother maintained a boarding house at a steamboat landing on the Mo. In 1860 they moved to New Orleans, where Minnie began to sing popular ballads for entertainment. She made her operatic debut at the age of 14 in Brooklyn, in La Sonnambula (Oct. 13, 1866), then took lessons with Achille Errani in N.Y On Nov. 15, 1867, she sang Juliette at the American premiere of Gounod’s opera in N.Y She attracted the attention of the rich industrialist Leonard Jerome and the music publisher Gustave Schirmer, who financed her trip to Europe. She sang in opera in Paris during the summer of 1868; made her London debut at Covent Garden on Oct. 26, 1868; in 1870 she sang in Vienna. She sang the title roles in the first American performances of Carmen (N.Y, Oct. 23, 1878) and Massenet’s Manon (N.Y, Dec. 23, 1885); made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y as Selika in L’Africaine on Feb. 10, 1891. She continued to appear there for that season, but following a disagreement with the management, decided to organize her own opera group; with it, she gave the first Chicago performance of Cavalleria rusticana (Sept. 28, 1891). She then settled in Switzerland with her husband, Baron Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg, whom she had married in 1881; after his death she lived mostly in Berlin; lost her fortune in the depreciation of her holdings in Germany. In 1919 Geraldine Farrar launched an appeal to raise funds for her in America. Hauk’s autobiography, collated by E. Hitchcock, was publ. as Memories of a Singer (London, 1925).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire