Edith Bideau

Edith Mae Bideau was from Chanute, Kansas, the daughter of Georges K. Bideau and Jennie Hale Bideau. Her father was a councilman in Chanute.[1] She earned bachelor's degrees from Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas in 1911, where she wrote the school song, "Hail! Old Baker";[2] and from Kansas State University in 1912.[3] She pursued further music studies in Italy, and with Richard Hageman in New York.[4][5][6]

Bideau taught voice and was director of the vocal department at the State Normal School in Pittsburg, Kansas from 1916 to 1919.[7][8][9] At the beginning of World War I, she was in Italy, and there were concerns for her safety.[10][11] When she returned to the United States, she gave concerts for troops stationed in Kansas.[12] She was director of music and instructor in church music at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois in 1935.[13] She taught voice at Iola, Kansas in 1947.[14]

Bideau was a concert and oratorio soloist in Chicago and Pittsburgh.[15] She made her New York debut in 1920, at Aeolian Hall. "Her voice is a soprano of very pure quality, a voice that is at its best in lyric matters," noted one reviewer.[16] Another witness, however, reported that "she was altogether too nervous to inspire critical confidence."[17][18] She toured the midwest as a performer in 1921.[19] On Christmas Day in 1921, she sang solos at six different events in New York City.[20] She wrote "Tone Coloring in Singing" an essay published in Étude magazine in 1955.[21]

Edith Bideau married Swedish diplomat Carl Gustav Normelli in 1920.[22] She was widowed when Normelli died in 1957, and she died in 1958, aged 69 years; her grave is in Kansas. Kansas legislator Edwin Bideau was her great-nephew, her brother Edwin Hale Bideau's grandson.[23]

• Edith Bideau at Find a Grave