Virginia Rea
American coloratura soprano
Virginia Rea (born Virginia Earle Murphy) (March 28, 1897 – July 1941) was an American coloratura soprano. She was billed as Olive Palmer when she appeared on The Palmolive Hour on radio.
Early years
Rea was born in March 1897 in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of wholesale businessman J.R. Murphy and his wife, Kitty Rea. The family moved to Des Moines, Iowa, when Rea was 12 or 13, and she began taking music lessons at Drake University's conservatory and singing solos at the University Church of Christ. She also studied in France.
Career
Rea gained her first professional role via a telephone call. After learning about a plan to produce 20 opera revivals in New York, she called the producer, who told her that no roles were available. She offered, however, to sing for him over the phone; when she had finished, he told her to take the first available train to New York. Still singing as Virginia Murphy, she performed in operas and had a national concert tour. Soon after those accomplishments, she began to use her mother's family name and became Virginia Rea.
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This entry incorporates text from “Virginia Rea” 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.