Biography

MARGERY MAYER, STAR OF THE AMERICAN OPERA STAGE – 1940’S AND 1950’S

Life on a young opera singer “On the Rails” with San Carlo Opera Company during the 1944-1945 season; a 37 city tour scheduled in long segments over an 8 month period, through Canada (Edmonton pictured here) and then the US from west coast to east coast culminating with Washington, multiple day appearances in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Photo: Edmonton Journal.

Margery Mayer, widely acclaimed for her portrayal of the most famous contralto roles in opera, including Carmen and Amneris, passed away in Califorina on May 12, 2014.

Margery Mayer sang with the New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and San Carlo Opera Companies; was soloist on a number of weekly, coast to coast radio broadcasts; and earned Broadway credit in Menotti’s The Medium.

The selections on this website are recordings of radio and opera broadcasts and recorded recitals by Margery Mayer spanning the 1940s to early 1960s. While radio broadcast recordings provide the best historical record of her singing, the 1940s and 50s found Margery Mayer featured in dozens of staged opera performances; appearing with The New York Philharmonic; the Chicago, Houston and Buffalo Symphony Orchestras; in televised opera broadcasts of Prokofiev’s War and Peace; in Douglas’s Ballad of Baby Doe; and at Radio City Music Hall singing excerpts from “Carmen” and the famous Glory of Easter theme from Arthur Rubinstein’s Komennoi-Ostrow.