Uppity Mormon Women: Emma Lucy Gates Bowen
Emma Lucy Gates Bowen

The Voice
Emma Lucy Gates Bowen was one of the great early opera singers of the 20th century.
She was born in 1882, the granddaughter of Brigham and Lucy Bigelow Young, and daughter of Susa Young Gates. She loved music and she loved to sing. As a child her family spent a few years in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), where she had the opportunity to perform before Queen Kapiolani.

Back in Utah, at the not-so-early age of twelve, she finally, officially studied music, like many Utahn children did, and her choice of instruments: piano and violin. A few years later, she became the youngest winner in the piano competition of the Welsh Eisteddfod held in Salt Lake.

She traveled to Germany to study piano but changed disciplines to voice, her first love. "My whole soul seems to be brought out when I sing," she wrote at the time. She spent some time in the US study opera in New York but returned to Germany in 1907 to study with Madame Blanche Corelli. So impressed with Emma's voice, Madame Corelli urged Emma to embark on a professional opera career.
She received a contract with the Royal Opera of Berlin. Later she became a prima coloratura soprano for the Kassel Royal Opera and her popularity in Europe soared.

She married Albert E. Bowen in 1916 (she was his second wife, but he was a widower when they married). He happily supported her in her career, following her from performance to performance.

Nothing like a World War to disrupt one's European success. During the war, she returned to the US and did rather well for herself as a prima coloratura, though not as well as she had in Europe. Later she established an opera company and began a rather successful recording career with the Columbia Graphophone Company, at one time selling more records than any other opera singer. She toured North America, husband in tow, until 1934 when his religious career called him back to Salt Lake. She returned with him to Utah and spent the rest of her life teaching music there. She also sang in the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir in 1935

"Miss Gates is the equal of the greatest prima donnas this country has produced," wrote one critic. Often compared to Galli-Curci, the then-current reigning prima donna of opera, she was praised for her "flawless agility," "purity of intonation," and "dazzling style," all demonstrating a "lyric charm and sensuous beauty of tone." Critics also praised her beauty, her stage presence, and her natural theatrical ability. Music was a universal experience, she believed. "We are part of music and music is part of us," she wrote. "Not all feel and sense this to the highest, yet all are touched by it as we pass this life." --Carol Cornwall Madsen

I wish I could have found a photograph of her online, but I couldn't but novenaric did! See the link in the accompanying comment. Meanwhile, there is an archive of her photographs and documents at the repository of the Utah State Historical Society. Feel free to go have a look if you're in town.