Solomea: Star of Opera’s Golden Age by Andriy J Semotiuk

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What does it take to reach the very top of your profession or calling? How does one rise from humble beginnings to achieve greatness and to perform with other first-class artists on the world stage? How do you break through barriers blocking you from reaching success because you are not the “right kind” of person? How do you break through the glass ceiling as a woman? As a parent or grandparent, where can one find a great model for children or even grandchildren to emulate? These are just some of the questions answered in this book.

Solomea Krushelnytska was hailed as the world’s leading dramatic soprano during the Golden Age of opera at the turn of the 20th century. Born in 1872 into a family with eight children in a small village in Western Ukraine, she studied opera and battled her way to superstardom while performing with opera legends like composer Giacomo Puccini, director Arturo Toscanini, and tenor Enrico Caruso.

Working with Arturo Toscanini, she played the lead roles of Salome and Elktra in the premiers of these operas in Italy. Among other major successes, Krushelnytska helped Giacomo Puccini rescue the opera Madama Butterfly from its failed debut at La Scala in Milan in 1904 by playing the lead role of Cio-Cio-San in the opera’s re-creation in the Teatro Grande in Brescia, Italy later that year. Thanks to their joint efforts, Madama Butterfly remains one of the most popular operas to this day. She also played other leading roles in major opera houses in Europe, South America, North America, and Northern Africa. Throughout her career, she shared the fruits of her success with her family.

Towards the end of her career, she moved back to Western Ukraine on the eve of World War II. Her beautiful voice was then drowned out by the gunfire of Soviet and Nazi armies and she was reduced to struggling for survival. Yet reverence for her talent likely helped her escape most of the ultraviolence that rampaged through her city at that time. Throughout the world war, she sheltered the author’s mother, aunt, and grandparents in her apartment. She spent her final years in Lviv, teaching at the same place where her rise to fame and fortune had begun.

Told from the perspective of her grand nephew Andriy Semotiuk, with intimate details related to his family’s immigrant experience never before shared, her rags-to-riches life story is an amazing odyssey, a triumph of the human spirit, an incredible testament to her dedication to art, and an inspiration to people everywhere.