Grand tradition: Eva Gauthier: 1885-1958: great Canadian musical figures of the past.

EVA GAUTHEIER SANG HER FIRST OPERATIC ARIAS AT the age of 12--Siebel's Waltz from Faust and Dalila's two great pieces--during a concert in Ottawa, where she had just passed her entrance exams for the Royal Conservatory in London. However, her uncle, Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier, decided that, as a francophone, she ought to attend the Paris Conservatoire instead.

While sailing to Europe (she was only 13 at the time), American actor Richard Mansfield overheard Gauthier practicing and warned her that the heavy contralto repertoire was straining her voice. Typically, she disregarded his advice.

When Gauthier entered the Paris Conservatoire, she was told it was a waste of time for her to study opera; not only did she have a deep contralto voice but she was also slight (four feet, nine inches), and stage roles for such a voice called for larger women. She ended up studying oratorio and concert, but unfortunately, developed a vocal node. However, she underwent a successful operation, and resumed her studies with a new teacher, Jacques Bouhy, whom she described later as her "only teacher."

Gauthier returned to London, where she eventually auditioned for fellow Canadian Emma Albani. When Albani learned that the young singer planned to sing "Ah, mon fils" from Le Prophete, she rolled her eyes, but by the end of the aria, she was so deeply moved that she embraced her, both women in tears. Greatly impressed, the soprano engaged Gauthier to tour with her as a contralto throughout England, Scotland and Canada from 1905 to 1906. At the farewell concert in Ottawa, Albani proclaimed, "I leave you Eva Gauthier as my artistic legacy to my country."

Gauthier was in New York when Albani called her back to London to sing in Harris's Coronation Mass for Edward VI. Lord Strathcona, who had made his fortune with the Hudson's Bay Company and was the High Commissioner for Canada in London at the time, heard Gauthier at the concert. Upon learning she wanted to study in Italy, he set up a scholarship fund for her.

Gauthier's debut in Pavia in 1909 was as Micaela in Bizet's Carmen. She received critical acclaim for her singing, but unfortunately, she'd received no coaching in movement or acting, and was virtually immobile during the first performance. Horrified by the experience, she decided that the opera stage was not for her.

Nevertheless, in 1910 she accepted an engagement with Covent Garden. Gauthier was asked to learn the role of Mallika in Delibes' Lakme, which she was to sing with Luisa Tetrazzini and John McCormack. But Tetrazzini complained that her voice was being overpowered by the young singer, and on opening night said that she would not go on if Gauthier was to sing. Gauthier was duly replaced at the last minute. Although the manager at Covent Garden was deeply apologetic and promised her other roles, she told him he could "consider her out of the company."

Thus ended her career on the operatic stage. Gauthier travelled to Java, where she joined her future husband, Franz Knoote, who was working there as a plantation manager. She toured Java, Singapore and China, and was the first first Western woman to study with a Javanese gamelan ensemble. After her marriage in 1911, she toured the Philippines, China, Japan, Malaya, Sumatra, New Zealand and Australia.

When World War I broke out, Gauthier went to New York. Before the war was over, she and Knoote would be divorced; she claimed she found the demands of a busy concert career and marriage to be incompatible.

Back in the United States, she toured the country in a vaudeville act--sometimes appearing on the same circuit as actor Walter Houston--and proved to be quite an unconventional recital artist. Her concert programs always included the music she had brought back from Java, presented in spectacular Javanese costume, performances that were wildly successful.

Her next recital was to change the path of her career once again. She decided to include the premiere of a work by a friend, the little-known Ravel, with whom she had made her Parisian stage debut some years earlier. The piece was so well received that henceforth every recital contained premieres. Gauthier then took the most daring step of her career, introducing six samples of American jazz on a program of Purcell, Bartok, Schoenberg and Hindemith. The jazz composer (and Gauthier's accompanist) was the then-unknown George Gershwin. It was not only the first time jazz had ever been sung in a concert, but also the first time she herself had performed jazz and the first time Gershwin had appeared as a pianist and composer in public. Musical America proclaimed her "The High Priestess of Modern Song" and in 1959, Mayfair magazine billed her as the Canadian who discovered Gershwin.

Sadly, however, the only recording of this fascinating singer available today (which we were able to find) is a 1917 rendition of the "Air de larmes" from Massenet's Werther (Analekta's Great Voices of Canada: Volume I). The very fact that the richness and depth of her voice are even discernible on such an old recording bears testament to Gauthier's greatness as a singer.