Matja von Niessen-Stone
American singer and opera singer (1870-1948)
Matja von Niessen-Stone (December 28, 1870 — June 8, 1948) was a Russian-born German concert singer. She sang with the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 to 1910.
Early life
Matja von Niessen was born in Moscow, the daughter of Hermann von Niessen, an architect, and Mathilde Bergmann von Niessen. She was raised in Germany by her mother after 1876, and educated there. She studied music under Adelina Paschalis, Etelka Gerster, and George Fergusson.
Career
Matja von Niessen was variously classified as a mezzo-soprano, contralto, and mezzo-contralto during her career. She gave her debut concert in Dresden in 1890, and toured extensively in Europe after that. She was appointed as an instructor at the Imperial School of Music in Odessa in 1896, and in 1901 at music school in Riga.
She moved to the United States in 1906. "Matja von Niessen-Stone is the mistress of a faultless vocal method and unusual interpretive gifts," noted an American publication in 1907, "an unalloyed treat for discerning music lovers." Matja von Niessen-Stone made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1908, in Die Walküre; she also appeared in productions of La Traviata, Carmen, Faust, Rigoletto, and Cavalleria Rusticana.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Matja von Niessen-Stone” as american singer and opera singer (1870-1948). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q18274843. VIAF identifies the subject as 2589171732601709080008. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1870, 1948, 1908 and 1910.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matja von Niessen-Stone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.