Elsa Stralia, born Elsie Mary Fischer (1 March 1881 – 31 August 1945) was an Australian soprano with an international reputation in Europe and America.

Family

The daughter of Johannes Hugo Fischer (1850-1901), and Annie Christiana Fischer (1858-1898), née Claussen, Elsie Mary Fischer was born in

Norwood, South Australia Norwood is a suburb of Adelaide, about east of the Adelaide city centre. The suburb is in the City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters, whose predecessor was the oldest South Australian local government municipality. History Before British colonis ...

on 1 March 1881. The family moved to Melbourne in 1899, where she was convent-educated. She married William Mountford Moses (1875-1940) in Sydney on 24 December 1908. She divorced Moses in 1935. She married Adolph Theodor Christensen (1878-1942) of

Patea Patea ( ) is the third-largest town in South Taranaki District, New Zealand. It is on the western bank of the Pātea River, 61 kilometres north-west of Whanganui on . Hāwera is 27 km to the north-west, and Waverley 17 km to the ea ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

in Sydney on 14 November 1935. They lived in Patea until Christensen's death in 1942.

Stage name

Like other noted Australian sopranos, such as June Mary Gough (1929-2005) ("June Bronhill", after Broken Hill), Vera Honor Hempseed (1890-1952) ("Madame Vera Tasma", after Tasmania), Helen Porter Mitchell (1861-1931) ("Nellie Melba", after Melbourne), Dorothy Mabel Thomas (1896-1978) ("Dorothy Canberra"), Florence Ellen Towl (1870-1952) ("Madame Ballara", after Ballarat), and Florence Mary Wilson (1892-1968) ("Florence Austral"), Elsie Mary Fischer adopted the stage name "Elsa Stralia" in honour of Australia.

Career

After appearing in Sydney, she studied in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. She made her

Covent Garden, London Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist si ...

debut as Donna Elvira in Mozart's '' Don Giovanni'' in 1913, under the professional name of Elsa Stralia. She appeared at Covent Garden, and in Milan,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. She toured in South Africa, and in a number of American cities, once singing "

The Star-Spangled Banner "The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States. The lyrics come from the "Defence of Fort M'Henry", a poem written on September 14, 1814, by 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the b ...

" while dressed as the Statue of Liberty. She recorded for the

Columbia Graphophone Company Columbia Graphophone Co. Ltd. was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1917 as an offshoot of the American Columbia Phonograph Company, it became an independent British-owned company in 1922 in a managemen ...

, and toured Australasia in 1925 and 1934.

Death

On the death of her husband, she returned to Australia. She died, childless, at Belgrave, Victoria.

The Elsa Stralia Scholarship

Her estate was used to establish a scholarship for young Australian female singers.Scholarship to Young Soprano, ''The (Sydney) Sun'', (Friday, 4 September 1953), p.10.
/ref>

Footnotes

References

edited by John Ritchie (1990, Melbourne University Press)
Madame Stralia, ''The Windsor and Richmond Gazette'', (Friday, 19 June 1914), p.10.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stralia, Elsa 1881 births 1945 deaths Australian operatic sopranos People from Adelaide Singers from Melbourne 20th-century Australian women opera singers