#2951
Elizabeth Cotten
1893 - 1987 (94 years)
Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten was an American folk and blues musician. She was a self-taught left-handed guitarist who played a guitar strung for a right-handed player, but played it upside down. This position meant that she would play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking". NPR stated "her influence has reverberated through the generations, permeating every genre of music."
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Bess Flowers
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Bess Flowers was an American actress best known for her work as an extra in hundreds of films. She was known as "The Queen of the Hollywood Extras," appearing in more than 350 feature films and numerous comedy shorts in her 41-year career.
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Isa Miranda
1909 - 1982 (73 years)
Isa Miranda was an Italian actress with an international film career. Biography Miranda was born Ines Isabella Sampietro in Milan, the daughter of a street car conductor. When she was 10 years old, she began working as an errand girl for a dressmaker. She later had jobs in a box factory and a handbag factory. When she was 15, she became a model, a job that provided enough income for her to learn bookkeeping and typing in night school. She worked as a typist while attending the Accademia dei Filodrammatici in Milan and trained as a stage actress. She went on to play bit parts in Italian films in Rome.
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Margaret Farrand Thorp
1891 - 1970 (79 years)
Margaret Farrand Thorp was a writer, English professor, and journalist. Thorp published six books, including five biographies. She is most noted for her 1939 work America at the Movies and her 1949 work Female Persuasion: Six Strong-Minded Women.
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Florence Price
1887 - 1953 (66 years)
Florence Beatrice Price was an American classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price was educated at the New England Conservatory of Music, and was active in Chicago from 1927 until her death in 1953. Price is noted as the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. Price composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her work...
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Toni Stolper
1890 - 1988 (98 years)
Antonie "Toni" Stolper was an Austrian-German economist and journalist. She fled Europe and immigrated to the United States in 1933 and moved to Canada in 1977. Biography Stolper was born Antonie Kassowitz, daughter of and , in Vienna, Austria in 1890. She studied law in Vienna and economics in Berlin, Germany, earning her doctorate under Heinrich Herkner in 1917. In 1921, she married Gustav Stolper, the editor of a journal called Der Österreichische Volkswirt . In 1925, the couple moved to Berlin, where Gustav Stolper established a new paper, Der Deutsche Volkswirt . Toni Stolper wrote regu...
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Elisabeth Schumann
1888 - 1952 (64 years)
Elisabeth Schumann was a German lyric soprano who sang in opera, operetta, oratorio, and lieder. She left a substantial legacy of recordings. Career Born in Merseburg, Schumann trained for a singing career in Berlin and Dresden. She made her stage debut in Hamburg in 1909. Her initial career started in the lighter soubrette roles that expanded into mostly lyrical roles, some coloratura roles, and even a few dramatic roles. She remained at the Hamburg State Opera until 1919, also singing during the 1914/1915 season at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.
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Stefi Geyer
1888 - 1956 (68 years)
Stefi Geyer was a Hungarian violinist who was considered one of the leading violinists of her generation. Biography Born in 1888 in Budapest, she was the daughter of Josef Geyer, a police doctor who played the violin himself. When she was 5 years old she started playing the violin, with remarkable results for someone who had not practiced at all. She subsequently studied under Jenő Hubay.
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Etta Lemon
1860 - 1953 (93 years)
Margaretta "Etta" Louisa Lemon was an English bird conservationist and a founding member of what is now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds . She was born into an evangelical Christian family in Kent, and after her father's death she increasingly campaigned against the use of plumage in hatmaking which had led to billions of birds being killed for their feathers. She founded the Fur, Fin and Feather Folk with Eliza Phillips in Croydon in 1889, which two years later merged with Emily Williamson's Manchester-based Society for the Protection of Birds , also founded in 1889. The new or...
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Cass Elliot
1941 - 1974 (33 years)
Ellen Naomi Cohen , known professionally as Cass Elliot, was an American singer and voice actress. She was also known as "Mama Cass", but she reportedly hated the name. She was a member of the singing group the Mamas & the Papas. After the group broke up, Elliot released five solo albums. She received the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Performance for "Monday, Monday" . In 1998, she was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her work with the Mamas & the Papas.
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Helene Chadwick
1897 - 1940 (43 years)
Helene Chadwick was an American actress in silent and in early sound films. Early life and career Chadwick was born in the small town of Chadwicks, New York, which was named for her great-grandfather. Her parents were George W. Chadwick Jr. and Marie Louise Norton Chadwick. Her mother was a singer who performed on the stage and her father was a business man.
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Marilyn Monroe
1926 - 1962 (36 years)
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, Monroe remains a pop culture icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her as the sixth-greatest female screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
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Ethel Clayton
1882 - 1966 (84 years)
Ethel Clayton was an American actress of the silent film era. Early years Born in Champaign, Illinois, Clayton attended St. Elizabeth's school in Chicago. Career Clayton debuted on stage as a professional as a member of the chorus in a production at the Chicago Opera House. After that, she worked with stock theater companies in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
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Nadia Reisenberg
1904 - 1983 (79 years)
Nadia Reisenberg Sherman was an American pianist of Lithuanian birth. Biography Nadia Reisenberg was born in Vilnius to a Jewish family. Her parents were Aaron and Rachel Reisenberg. Her sister Anna was born two years later, and Clara in 1911 who later took the married name of Clara Rockmore and became renowned for her virtuosity on the theremin. The three sisters remained extremely close. When Nadia was six, her uncle Paul sent the family a piano, and Nadia immediately knew she would be at the keyboard for the rest of her life. Her talent demanded that the family move to St. Petersburg for ...
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Alice Blinn
1889 - 1982 (93 years)
Alice Blinn was an American educator, home efficiency expert, and magazine editor. Born in Candor, New York, she attended the New York State normal school and became a teacher. After teaching briefly, in 1913, she entered Cornell University and earned a degree in Domestic Science. While in school, she founded and managed the Cornell Women's Review. After graduation in 1917, she became a food conservation demonstrator for the New York Extension Service and then returned after a year to teach and manage the publications office for the Extension Service at Cornell.
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Mabel Normand
1892 - 1930 (38 years)
Amabel Ethelreid Normand , better known as Mabel Normand, was an American silent film actress, director and screenwriter. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in their Keystone Studios films, and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own film studio and production company, the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company. On screen, she appeared in twelve successful films with Charlie Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing films featuring Chaplin as her leading man. In the 1920s Normand's name was linked wit...
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Chung Chil-sung
1897 - 1958 (61 years)
Chung Chil-sung , also known by her pen name Geumjuk , was a Korean dancer, feminist, and independence activist. Biography She was born in Daegu province, one of twenty three provinces of the Joseon kingdom. It was said that she came from a poor family. Her exact birth year is questioned often as others say she was born in 1902, 1905, and 1908, but others say that 1897 seems to be more appropriate. There are no details about her childhood or her family clan.
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Marie Tempest
1864 - 1942 (78 years)
Dame Mary Susan Etherington, , known professionally as Marie Tempest, was an English singer and actress. Tempest became a famous soprano in late Victorian light opera and Edwardian musical comedies. Later, she became a leading comic actress and toured widely in North America and elsewhere. She was, at times, her own theatre manager during a career spanning 55 years. She was also instrumental in the founding of the actors' union Equity in Britain.
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Lillian Russell
1860 - 1922 (62 years)
Lillian Russell was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, praised for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence; a reviewer referred to her as "the most beautiful actress of the legitimate stage."
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Maria Ivogün
1891 - 1987 (96 years)
Maria Ivogün was a distinguished soprano singer of Hungarian origin. She was an especially outstanding interpreter of the works of Mozart: her recording of the aria of the Queen of the Night became legendary.
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Judy Holliday
1921 - 1965 (44 years)
Judy Holliday was an American actress, comedian and singer. She began her career as part of a nightclub act before working in Broadway plays and musicals. Her success as Billie Dawn in the 1946 stage production of Born Yesterday led to her being cast in the 1950 film version for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. She was known for her performance on Broadway in the musical Bells Are Ringing, winning a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical and reprising her role in the 1960 fi...
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Margarita Bertheau
1913 - 1975 (62 years)
Margarita Bertheau Odio was a Costa Rican painter and cultural promoter. The Costa Rican Art Museum states she is said to be known for "landscapes, portraits, watercolor figures, and her geometric, surrealistic and abstract work." She has been called the first female Watercolor painting artist of her country. She had independent views and was contemporary with the first wave of Costa Rican artists that included Dinora Bolandi, Lola Fernandez and Sonia Romero. These four are said to have taught fine art at the University of Costa Rica and to have created the second generation of Costa Rican wo...
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Josephine Lucchese
1893 - 1974 (81 years)
Josephine Lucchese was an American operatic soprano who had an active international singing career during the 1920s and 1930s. A skilled coloratura soprano, she was particularly admired for her portrayals of Rosina in The Barber of Seville, Violetta in La traviata, and the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor. She began her opera career in 1920 with the San Carlo Opera Company; a touring opera company in the United States. She was a resident artist with the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company from 1929 to 1932, and was a principal artist with the Dutch National Opera during the 1930s. She also appe...
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Barbara Bedford
1903 - 1981 (78 years)
Barbara Bedford was an American actress who appeared in dozens of silent movies. Her career declined after the introduction of sound, but she continued to appear in small roles until 1945. Early life Barbara Bedford was born Violet May Rose on July 19, 1903, the first child to Robert William Rose, a Scottish-American interior decorator, and Barbara Rose , who was a first generation Czech-American. She had a brother, William Rose. The 1910 census lists the family as living in Denver, Colorado.
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Olga Samaroff
1880 - 1948 (68 years)
Olga Samaroff was an American pianist, music critic, and teacher. Among her teachers was Charles-Valentin Alkan's son, Élie-Miriam Delaborde. Her second husband was the conductor Leopold Stokowski.
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Lula Mysz-Gmeiner
1876 - 1948 (72 years)
Lula Mysz-Gmeiner was a German concert contralto and mezzo-soprano born in Transylvania, who performed lieder recitals in Europe and the United States. She was an academic voice teacher in Berlin and taught both Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Peter Anders.
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Valeria Barsova
1892 - 1967 (75 years)
Valeria Vladimirovna Barsova , PAU, was a Russian operatic soprano, one of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of the first half of the 20th century in Russia. Life and career Valeria Barsova first studied the piano with Estonian composer Artur Kapp. She then studied singing at the Moscow Conservatory with Mazetti. In 1915, she was singing in a Moscow cabaret when she was noticed by Sergei Zimin, director of the Zimin Opera, where she made her operatic debut in 1917, as Gilda in Rigoletto. Other roles at this theatre included; Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Constance in Die Entführung aus de...
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Millicent Silver
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Millicent Irene Silver was an English harpsichordist, who began her career as a pianist and violinist. Early life Born in South London, her father, James Brand Silver, was a violinist and oboist, and had been a boy chorister at St. George's Chapel, Windsor where his singing attracted the attention of Queen Victoria. Her mother Amelia Argyle Silver was a piano teacher. Millicent was the second of four children. Her musical talent was discovered at the age of three, when she imitated her elder brother's practising.
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Caroline Hatchard
1883 - 1970 (87 years)
Caroline Gertrude Hatchard was a British lyric soprano, musical theatre and opera singer of the 20th-century who was the first English-born and trained soprano to be engaged by the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden where she played Sophie in the British premiere of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier on 29 January 1913 with Thomas Beecham conducting.
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Branka Musulin
1917 - 1975 (58 years)
Branka Musulin was a German-Croatian classical pianist and teacher. Life Musulin was born in Croatia in Zagreb. As from the age of eight, she studied with celebrated Croatian pianist Svetislav Stančić in Zagreb and played in public at that time. After her concert diploma, she travelled to Paris in 1936 to study with Alfred Cortot and Yvonne Lefébure. As from 1938, she studied with Alfredo Casella in Siena and after 1941 with Max von Pauer in South Germany .
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Mirta Aguirre
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
Mirta Aguirre Carreras was a Cuban poet, novelist, journalist and political activist from the LGBTQI movement. She has been called "the most important female academic and woman of letters in post-revolutionary Cuba".
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Carrie Tubb
1876 - 1976 (100 years)
Caroline Elizabeth Tubb was an English soprano of the early 20th century, and later a teacher of singing at the Guildhall School of Music. She made her debut at London's Royal Opera House in 1910, where she appeared in such works as Elektra and Hänsel und Gretel. With Thomas Beecham's opera company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she sang in Die Fledermaus, The Marriage of Figaro and The Tales of Hoffmann. Later, she mostly appeared on the concert platform, including at 54 Prom concerts and at the major British music festivals. She also made some early recordings. Around 1930 she retired from singing and began teaching.
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Gene Gauntier
1885 - 1966 (81 years)
Gene Gauntier was an American screenwriter and actress who was one of the pioneers of the motion picture industry. A writer, director, and actress in films from mid 1906 to 1920, she wrote screenplays for 42 films. She performed in 87 films and is credited as the director of The Grandmother .
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Ilona Štěpánová-Kurzová
1899 - 1975 (76 years)
Ilona Štěpánová-Kurzová was a Czechoslovak concert pianist and piano teacher, a professor at the Prague Academy of Arts. Her students included Ivan Moravec. Ilona Štěpánová-Kurzová was the mother of pianist Pavel Štěpán.
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Frances James
1903 - 1988 (85 years)
Frances James was a Canadian soprano who specialized in concert repertoire. She worked prolifically as a performer on CBC Radio and as a recitalist from the late 1920s through the 1950s; premiering works by numerous Canadian composers of note and championing works by contemporary international composers. Her performances were noted for their musical intelligence and sophistication. Her singing was admired by several important composers, including Benjamin Britten, Paul Hindemith, and Darius Milhaud. While her performances, both live and on radio/disc, were mainly from the concert repertoire, ...
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Mary Elizabeth Turner Salter
1856 - 1938 (82 years)
Mary Elizabeth Turner Salter was an American soprano and composer. She was born in Peoria, Illinois, the daughter of Jonathan and Mary E. Hinds Turner. Turner graduated from Burlington High School in Burlington, Iowa, and the Boston College of Music, and then worked as a voice teacher at Wellesley College and performed in churches. In 1881 she married Sumner Salter. She died in Orangeburg, New York. She was one of the founding members of the American Society of Women Composers.
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Charlotte Burton
1881 - 1942 (61 years)
Charlotte E. Burton was an American silent film actress. Biography Early life and education Charlotte E. Burton was born on May 30, 1881, in San Francisco, California. However there is some debate on her date of birth; some sources state she was born ten years later, on May 30, 1891; and other sources state she died at age 48 .
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Katharine Lloyd-Williams
1896 - 1973 (77 years)
Katharine Georgina Lloyd-Williams CBE was a British anaesthetist, general practitioner and medical educator. She was a consultant anaesthetist at the Royal Free Hospital from 1934 and dean of the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine from 1945, retiring from both posts in 1962.
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Helen Hopekirk
1856 - 1945 (89 years)
Helen Hopekirk was a Scottish pianist and composer who lived and worked in Boston. Life and career Helen Hopekirk was born in Portobello, Edinburgh in Scotland, a daughter of music shop owners Adam and Helen Hopekirk. She studied music with George Lichtenstein and Scottish composer Alexander Mackenzie, and made her debut as a soloist in 1874 with the Edinburgh Amateur Orchestral Society. After other successful performances and the death of her father, she relocated to study composition with Carl Reinecke in Leipzig. After successful debuts in Leipzig and London, she began regular concert to...
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Lola Gjoka
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Lola Gjoka Aleksi was an Albanian pianist during the period of the Communist regime. Life Gjoka was born in Sevastopol in 1910, into an Albanian family. She began learning the piano at the age of six, and her success was such that her father arranged for her to have lessons from the pianist Karalovy. In 1932 her family moved to Korçë, where Gjoka worked as an accompanist for singers including the soprano Tefta Tashko-Koço, the Albanian folk singer Marie Kraja, and Mihal Ciko.
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Luella Gear
1897 - 1980 (83 years)
Luella Gear was an American actress. She appeared in numerous films, TV series and theatrical productions throughout the 1910s to the 1960s Early life Gear was born in New York in 1897. She attended the Spence School and was educated in Brussels, Belgium.
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Fanny Arthur Robinson
1831 - 1879 (48 years)
Fanny Arthur Robinson was an English pianist, music educator and composer who spent most of her career in Dublin, Ireland. Biography Fanny Robinson was born in Southampton and studied the piano in London with William Sterndale Bennett and Sigismund Thalberg. She performed in Dublin in February 1849 where she met her future husband Joseph Robinson, conductor, composer and chorister at St. Patrick's Cathedral. They married on 17 July 1849. She appeared as a pianist in London and Paris, and in 1856 made her performing debut in Ireland. She took a teaching position at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in the same year.
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Judith Raskin
1928 - 1984 (56 years)
Judith Raskin was an American lyric soprano, renowned for her fine voice as well as her acting. Life and work Raskin was born in New York to Harry A. Raskin, a high school music teacher, and Lillian Raskin, a grade school teacher. Her father aroused her childhood interest in music, leading her to study violin and piano, before she turned her focus to singing. In 1945, she graduated from Roosevelt High School, Yonkers and attended Smith College, where she majored in music. It was during her college years that she began taking singing lessons, which she continued after graduation in order to...
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Julia Perry
1924 - 1979 (55 years)
Julia Amanda Perry was an American classical composer and teacher who combined European classical and neo-classical training with her African-American heritage. Life and education Born in Lexington, Kentucky, as a child Perry moved with her family to Akron, Ohio. She went on to study voice, piano, and composition at the Westminster Choir College 1943–48. It was there that she received her B.M. and M.M. She continued on to her graduate studies at Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, where she was a student of Luigi Dallapiccola, and then later studied at the Juilliard School of Music. Around...
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Frida Richard
1873 - 1946 (73 years)
Frida Richard was an Austrian actress. Selected filmography The Sin of Helga Arndt The Queen's Love Letter The Marriage of Luise Rohrbach The Diamond Foundation The Ringwall Family Waves of Fate The Ghost Hunt The Pied Piper of Hamelin Intoxication Baccarat The Dancer Superstition The Teahouse of the Ten Lotus Flowers Temperamental Artist The Black Count Christian Wahnschaffe Judith Trachtenberg The Graveyard of the Living The Last Witness The Hunt for the Truth The New Paradise The Stranger from Alster Street About the Son Alfred von Ingelheim's Dramatic Life Wandering Souls The Shadow of Ga...
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Suzanne Perrottet
1889 - 1983 (94 years)
Suzanne Perrottet was a Swiss dancer, musician, and movement teacher. Trained in music and dance, Perrottet ran the Bewegungsschule Suzanne Perrottet and was a member of the faculty at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Zürcher Bühnenstudio. She was active in the Dada art movement as a musician, performing at the Kaufleuten. In 1939 she co-founded the Swiss Professional Association of Dance and Movement. Along with Mary Wigman and Rudolf von Laban, she is considered one of the co-founders of modern Expressionist dance.
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Irma Beilke
1904 - 1989 (85 years)
Irma Beilke was a German operatic soprano, concert singer and academic voice teacher. A member of the Städtische Oper Berlin for decades, and also a member of the Vienna State Opera, she appeared in leading roles of the coloratura soprano and lyric soprano repertoire at major opera houses and festivals internationally, such as Mozart's Blonde and Verdi's La traviata. She took part in world premieres, including Capriccio by Richard Strauss. In 1945, she appeared in the first opera performance in Berlin after World War II, as Marzelline in Beethoven's Fidelio.
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Barbara Giuranna
1899 - 1998 (99 years)
Elena Barbara Giuranna was an Italian pianist and composer. Life Barbara Giuranna was born in Palermo, Italy and studied piano at the Palermo Conservatory with Guido Alberto Fano. She also studied composition at the Naples Conservatory with Camillo De Nardis and Antonio Savasta. She continued her education in composition at the Milan Conservatory with Giorgio Federico Ghedini.
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Kate Sara Chittenden
1856 - 1949 (93 years)
Kate Sara Chittenden was an American professor of music, music school founder, and piano teacher. Early life and education Chittenden was born in Hamilton, Canada West, the daughter of Curtis Strong Chittenden and Caroline Young Peterson Chittenden. Her parents were American; her father was a dentist born in Shelburne, Vermont. One of her paternal ancestors, William Chittenden , was one of six founders of Guilford, Connecticut, in 1639. Another ancestor, Thomas Chittenden , was the first Governor of Vermont. Her cousin Charles Curtis Chittenden was president of the American Dental Associatio...
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Caroline Burke
1913 - 1964 (51 years)
Caroline Flora Burke was an American actress, theater producer, television producer, writer, and art collector. She appeared in several films in the early 1940s before becoming a theater producer in New York City, notably producing several stage productions of Harold Pinter plays and Broadway productions. She also worked as a producer for NBC in the 1950s, and at the time was the company's only female producer.
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