Mabel Isabel Riegelman (April 1, 1886 – December 18, 1967) was a popular American operatic
soprano.[3]
Early life
Riegelman was born into a Jewish family in
Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Meyer Riegelmann and Rachel Isaacs Riegelmann. Her father was born in Ohio to German immigrants, and her mother was born in Australia to English Jews and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. Riegelman's family moved to California when she was a child.
Riegelman was "discovered" in
San Francisco by
Johanna Gadski, opera diva from
Stettin.[4] Gadski and the two Riegelman sisters (Mabel, the singer, and her younger sister Ruby, the pianist) traveled to Stettin under Gadski's tutelage.
[5][6]
Riegelman promoted municipal opera houses across the United States: "We should do as well by our opera houses as we do by the movies," she told an Oakland newspaper in 1918. "There should be a municipally endowed opera house in every city, and if that were the case there would be more opera given outside of New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia."[14] She also taught voice; one of her students in San Francisco was
Dorothy Warenskjold.[15]
Riegelman gave benefit concerts to support war relief during World War I.[16] Her brother Carl Robert Riegelman was injured in a 1919 train accident in France, while serving in the
United States Navy.[17]
Personal life
Riegelman married lawyer Marcus Lorne Samuels in 1913.[18][19] They had one son, Lorne R. Samuels. They lived at 485 California St.,
San Francisco, California.
[5] She was burned and injured by an electrical shock when a lamp in her home malfunctioned in 1928.[20] In 1932, her professionally loud screams helped thwart a burglary at their home.[21] She died in December 1967, in her late seventies, in
Burlingame, California.[22]