Jeanne Jomelli

Jeanne Jomelli was born in Amsterdam.[1] She studied voice under Mathilde Marchesi in Paris.[2]

Jomelli made her American debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1906.[3] In 1909 an aria, "The Call of Râdha" by Harriet Ware, with lyrics by Sarojini Naidu, was dedicated to Jomelli.[4] Jomelli herself set a Heinrich Heine poem, "Oft I wept while dreaming", to music in 1912.[5] "Mme. Jomelli had a pure soprano voice of singularly clear, steady, musical quality, and she was an accomplished vocalist," recalled Herman Klein, who worked with her on improving her English diction.[6]

She was in Belgium at the start of World War I and lost nineteen trunks of costumes and other possessions in the rush to leave ahead of German advances.[7] Instead she toured western Canadian cities with composer Hallett Gilberté during the war, giving benefit concerts for wounded veterans.[8] In 1917, she gave a concert in Los Angeles singing songs by Charles Wakefield Cadman, with Cadman himself accompanying her on piano.[9]

For the 1917/1918 academic year, Jomelli was engaged to teach at Cornish School of Music in Seattle, Washington.[10] However, she needed surgery for tonsillitis in September 1917,[11] which brought long-term health complications, and she taught while seated thereafter.[12]

Jomelli moved to Oakland, California, in 1918, and taught voice at the University of California in Berkeley.[13] She stayed in the San Francisco Bay area for most of her remaining years, [14] though she also spent significant time teaching in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the Punahou School.[15]

Jeanne Jomelli was first married in 1901, to a French tapestry maker, Nicolas Hernance.[16] They divorced amicably in 1913.[17] Her second husband was her manager, W. Orrin Backus. She died in August 1932, aged 53 years, in San Francisco, California.[18] Very soon after Jomelli's death, Orrin Backus remarried; when his new wife left him, in fear of his violent threats, he died in November 1932 by suicide.[19]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jeanne Jomelli.

• The Library of Congress has a photograph of Jeanne Jomelli from the 1910s, in the George Grantham Bain Collection.
• The Boston Public Library has a photograph of Jeanne Jomelli taken by Aimé Dupont in 1911, in the Philip Hale Photograph Collection.