Violet Gould’s Operetta School

by Christine Podas-Larson

To see this complete magazine article with endnotes and additional images, please view the PDF version.

Read the companion piece Violet Gould’s Civic Opera Musical Circle.

Violet Gould entered stage left and stood in front of the plush curtain. With her white-blond hair coiffed, a hint of pink on her clear cheeks, and her signature violet lipstick, she wore a chiffony dress and clutched a small nosegay of violets.

“It came to me in a dream,” she dramatically sighed as she stepped to stage right and laid the flowers on the piano. Almost in a trance, she described her vision of children singing operettas. With a flounce, she exited.

The curtain opened to a Royal Navy set and a troupe of children lustily singing about “sailing the ocean blue” on their “saucy ship” to open a full production of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s operetta HMS Pinafore.

Violet Gould believed “singing is fun.” She lived that motto throughout her own vocal career and passed the joy along through the Violet Gould Operetta School, which engaged an estimated 1,000 children in staging operettas and delighting audiences in St. Paul for more than two decades from 1952 to 1974. Her school was no Our Gang (The Little Rascals) seat-of-the-pants backyard company. To the dazzled eyes of her students, Violet opened the curtain to what real theater could be, producing major operettas with professional stage direction, creating vivid sets and costumes, hiring makeup technicians, and engaging in substantial promotional campaigns. Eileen O’Shaughnessy, who went on to design costumes for the Jawaahir Dance Company, played the mother in a 1961 production of Englebert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel opera at St. Mary’s Hall at Laurel and Howell Avenues. “I realized then what all went into it . . . the professionalism involved,” she recalled.

The fulfillment of Violet’s dream for children and her deep knowledge of musical production arose from her training and experiences as a professional singer and voice teacher, as well as her pure grit and determination.

“The Girl With the Golden Voice” 

Violet Adyelynne Gould was born around 1907 in Pierre, South Dakota. Her mother, Laura Hentzelman (1882-1960), came from a prominent family in Davenport, Iowa; Laura and her children sustained close ties to the Davenport community through the years as attested to by local newspaper articles that breathlessly followed Violet’s career. Violet’s father, Charles H. Gould, also of Davenport, was a “genial tri-city salesman,” who transferred to South Dakota shortly after marrying. The Gould marriage did not last. Charles was gone by 1910, leaving Laura with her daughter and seven-year-old son, Leroy. Laura relocated from Pierre to Sherman, South Dakota, and made her living as a musician and by renting rooms in her home.

Violet attended school in Minnehaha County (near Sioux Falls) and was a student in the McClarinnon School of Expression, run by the wife of the local minister. In 1919, her mother remarried widower James A. Helmey, a pharmacist from Minnesota who owned stores in Dell Rapids and Sherman. In 1926 when Violet was about eighteen, James, Laura, and the children moved to St. Paul.

For two years, Violet attended the Conservatory of Music at Macalester College, studying voice under its director, Harry Phillips (who was also on the faculty of the MacPhail School in Minneapolis) and Malcolm McMillan (a prominent chorister who led the Orpheus [choral] Club). She lived with her parents in duplexes in St. Paul’s Merriam Park neighborhood and held various clerical positions—her longest employment was as a proofreader with St. Paul hardware wholesaler Farwell, Ozmun, Kirk & Company.

In the late 1920s, Violet began to study voice with Agnes Rast Snyder, “acknowledged to be one of the leading contraltos of the north west,” who performed with the Schubert Club and Minneapolis Symphony and was heard frequently in WCCO broadcasts. Snyder possessed a voice of “beautiful quality, well controlled and produced with ease.” She had studied with Rudolph Weyrauch of the Wiesbaden (Germany) Opera and Frank Bibb at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. At the time Violet began study with her, Snyder was on the faculty of the Minnesota College School of Music, located at Harvard and Delaware Streets in southeast Minneapolis. Later, she joined the University of Minnesota faculty and, in 1933, was appointed assistant professor of voice at Carleton College in Northfield.

Under Snyder’s coaching, Violet developed as a dramatic soprano, with a “voice of wide range and resonance.” She sang with “an easy graciousness which her audiences like[d] immensely.” One review dubbed her “The Girl with the Golden Voice.”

The St. Paul Civic Opera: Violet’s Musical Home

Violet remarked that “with many . . . , it was almost imperative to go to New York City or even Europe to study music, but she found what she needed in St. Paul.” In 1933, the year of its formation, Violet discovered her musical home—the St. Paul Civic Opera Association. Snyder was among its founding board of advisors and likely had a hand in Violet’s inclusion in its inaugural roster of artists. The following year, Snyder starred in the Civic Opera’s production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, and Violet had her breakthrough chance. In the role of Frasquita (Carmen’s friend), Violet was a smash hit, causing Quad-City Times critics to swoon in their praises: “Miss Gould scored a decided triumph,” and her dressing room was a “bower” of congratulatory roses. A wonderful future was predicted.

The Civic Opera made a deep impression on Violet. Organized in the midst of the Great Depression, it fed a community hunger for good opera at affordable prices. Backed by prominent St. Paulites, it had, from its start, a purpose that was both cultural and civic: it was considered a community asset and an artistic service to the city. During those financially challenging times, it provided employment to artists and was supported by the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) under the Federal Music Project. In the program of its opening production, the Civic Opera affirmed the need for the genre, concluding that, “there is a definite niche for opera and the time is psychologically ripe to fill it.”

Violet was, from its inception through the early 1960s, a mainstay in the Civic Opera’s productions and summer Pops concerts. Following her debut in Carmen, she appeared in operatic roles as varied as Antonia’s mother in Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann and Nettie Fowler in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Carousel, both in the 1953 production and later, in 1962, with Broadway star John Raitt as the headliner. She felt the part of Nettie was “made for her . . . I do feel like Nettie when I sing her songs” [like] ‘June is Bustin’ Out All Over’ and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’ ”

For the Pops, Violet sang everything from Bizet and Giacomo Puccini to Victor Herbert and perennial hits such as “The Land of the Sky Blue Water” by Charles Wakefield Cadman and “By The Waters of Minnetonka” by Thurlow Lieurance. The Pops concerts featured musicians from the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and were produced in the St. Paul Auditorium in conjunction with ice shows by the St. Paul Figure Skating Club. They drew huge crowds (as many as 7,000) from throughout the Midwest. Presented every summer from 1937 to 1962, the Pops ran from mid-July to early September. Each of two or three weekly programs was organized around a theme: “Marvelous Minnesota,” “A Night in Old Vienna,” “Rodgers and Hammerstein,” “Victor Herbert and Jerome Kern,” and so on. The program featured soloists singing two pieces in each act with the orchestra playing two more, followed by an ice show around the same theme. When the Pops began in 1937, it presented a season of nine programs. By 1957, it staged twenty-five. Violet was on the program at least once each summer.

Beyond the opera, she sang on KSTP radio broadcasts and performed in numerous civic programs. Her broad repertoire included Broadway hits, operatic arias, sacred pieces, and international music, such as art songs based on the poems of Rabindranath Tagore. She formed the Violet Gould Quartet (based at Central Presbyterian Church), which performed citywide, including at the Hallie Q. Brown Center. Violet was in demand as a church soloist for Hamline Methodist Episcopal Church, First Church of Christ Scientist, and other local congregations. She took on private voice students and coached a thirty-member glee club.

An Independent Woman and Civic Leader

By the mid-1950s, with income from her singing engagements and voice students, Violet supported herself fulltime with her music. A single woman, she moved into her own apartment—a duplex on Portland Avenue near St. Thomas College—that served as her studio and seemed “exotic” to her voice students.

Inspired by the Civic Opera model, Violet saw music as “an important part of our civic life” and later carried that ethic into her operetta school and her leadership roles in the city’s cultural organizations. She served on the opera’s board of directors from 1954 to 1967, one of only two single women early on. She was a director of the Minneapolis Symphony’s annual fund drive and on The Schubert Club board of directors, leading efforts to make performances accessible to young people at reduced ticket prices and encouraging her private voice students to participate in the club’s Student Section. Respected for her vocal discernment, she was repeatedly named a judge for the Upper Midwest Metropolitan Opera auditions.

The Operetta School, 1952-1974

The pièce de ré​sistance of her musical entrepreneurship was the Violet Gould Operetta School, founded in 1952. Arising from the vocalist’s dream, its purpose was “to bring to children . . . living operettas to stimulate and satisfy a taste for music, dramatics and operettas . . . and to provide young singers . . . training and experience through participation in actual performances. . . .”

Reflective of her Civic Opera ethic, her productions shared operetta with wider audiences at affordable prices.

Children ages four to twelve came to the school through Violet’s connections in the Twin Cities’ musical community, word of mouth, from the ranks of her private students, and from the sheer excitement parents and children experienced in attending performances. Many in the original operetta school were children of musicians involved with the Civic Opera. Initially, the school and performances were held in the hall of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church at Laurel and Howell, then in the Volunteers of America building (at Rice Park) and Women’s City Club, and, finally, in the auditoriums of St. Paul Academy and Summit School. When it began in 1952, the operetta school enrolled sixty children per production. Violet ultimately pared that to thirty, “a more manageable number.” In 1961, children were charged $1.50 per week tuition.

Over time, she refined the school’s mission statement: “provide each child with an avenue for self-expression; to encourage and guide the child’s creative imagination; and to grow . . . in social understanding and cooperation.”

Children would attend the school every Saturday for two to three months, learning an operetta’s entire score and all the parts before the roles were cast—often double and triple cast to give more participants big roles and to provide backup in case of illness. Then, the curtain went up for one to two weekends of performances. She produced three operettas each year. The productions would go on tour to schools, churches, and social clubs throughout St. Paul and further afield to Hastings, Hudson, and White Bear Lake, and even to the ballroom of St. Paul’s Lowry Hotel.

For the operetta school repertoire, Violet chose widely recognized standards, such as Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and HMS Pinafore as well as contemporary works based on fairy tales. These included Rumpelstiltskin, from the Hans Christian Anderson story, adapted and written by Jane Dalton with music by Don Wilson; Johnny Appleseed by Carmino Carl Ravosa; and Adventures of Pinocchio, dramatized by Theodosia Paynter with music by G. A. Grant-Schaefer. She even took on Mozart the Boy Wonder, featuring the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and arranged by J.  Michael Diack, with children balancing ornate wigs on their heads as they glided about the stage in bustled skirts and silk breeches.

Violet also made every effort to carve out a place at the adult table for her school. It was formally recognized as an associate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Central Opera Service, a national outreach program. An Opera News article heralded the wonders of opera in the Twin Cities, highlighting Opera Week, when the Metropolitan Opera would perform at Northrup Auditorium and made special note of “a lady named Violet Gould [who] runs an operetta school for small children.”

Violet even nurtured relationships with local newspapers. The school received significant media coverage throughout its history, with regular listings for upcoming art events alongside professional offerings. Virtually every production garnered feature coverage, with pictures—often on the front page of the Society and Arts sections—in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune.

A special treat for many students was the opportunity to perform in Civic Opera productions. When Puccini’s La Boheme needed a clutch of street urchins, the casting call came to the operetta school. Among many other productions, students also were featured in Carousel, with the chance to meet and score Raitt’s autograph, and in Damn Yankees with Alan Young (star of the Mister Ed television series) as the lead. These opportunities left lasting impressions, recalled former operetta student Linda Kelsey. “We were among professional actors and actresses . . . it was a real thrill.” As these opportunities arose, Violet always encouraged her students to “remember whom you represent.”

Many operetta school students starred in their high school musicals and plays and community theater, and some continued with professional acting careers. Because of Violet’s association with Mady and Max Metzger (see online sidebar), the St. Paul Opera Workshop became a performance destination for some of her teenage students who had aged out of the operetta school. Thomas Foster of Edina was chosen to be a member of The Julliard School’s first class in drama. He listed the operetta school as part of his artistic resume in making his application. Joan Jardine, a member of the school from 1959 to 1963, was the star of Cretin High School musicals her sophomore through senior years and participated in numerous community theater productions. Karla Strom was on Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour. Kelsey, the star of the school’s 1959 production of HMS Pinafore, also participated in the Civic Opera productions of Wizard of Oz and La Boheme. She graduated with a degree in theater from the University of Minnesota, starred in the Guthrie Theater’s production of The Tempest, and moved to Hollywood, starring in popular TV shows such as Lou Grant and garnering Emmy nominations. Today, she lives in St. Paul and remains a mainstay of Twin Cities’ theater.

A Partner for Violet: Ralph Mather

In November 1958, Violet, at age fifty-one, married Ralph J. Mather, who was nineteen years her senior. They met through the Civic Opera, where Ralph had served on the board of directors since 1939. Their wedding took place in the Summit Avenue home of then Civic Opera board chair Julian Gilman. Ralph was a resourceful and prominent businessman; he spent his career (1927 onward) at Brown & Bigelow as creative director and special sales representative. The St. Paul-based company produced advertising novelties and calendars. Ralph was credited with the idea of featuring Minnesota tourist locations on playing cards that were distributed nationally.

Born and raised in Springdale, Iowa, Ralph was a graduate of Cornell College. He was an avid horseman who rode over 1,000 miles on horseback in the Canadian Rockies and served as president of the Trail Riders of the Canadian Rockies. He was involved in local horse shows and recruited Violet to sing the national anthem at show openings at the Minnesota State Fair. Ralph’s first marriage (1916-1933) to Adele Bray of Montana ended in tragedy. She died in a boating accident near Ely while with Brown & Bigelow’s founder, H. H. Bigelow.

Married for nineteen years, Violet and Ralph served together on the Civic Opera Board of Directors until 1967. They shared a zeal for travel. He had once owned Mather Travel, and Violet approached journeys abroad with entrepreneurial gusto. She led trips to Europe (one a forty-four-day-sojourn that included tulip time in Holland) and followed the adventures by presenting slide shows accompanied by her musical narratives. Together, the couple traveled, from the Canadian Rockies to Hawaii, from Europe to Egypt. Ralph survived Violet by less than a year, dying on April 22, 1978, at age ninety.

A Mentor to Young Artists and Entrepreneurs

“Violet got behind people . . . she took young people seriously.”

In 1964, Nancy Todora, a recent Monroe High School graduate and Violet’s private voice student, won a scholarship to Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio—one of the nation’s premier schools. But there were limitations: Nancy would need funds for any expenses beyond tuition and room and board. Violet presented this challenge to several other voice students, who leapt into action. From their efforts, The Hayloft Theatre Company formed, and their original musical, Come What May, played in the Thurston and Jane Wood barn in Sunfish Lake, Minnesota. It was billed as a Violet Gould Mather Production. Hamline University theater major Jeffrey Moses and University of Minnesota music major Jason Cooper wrote an original script and score. Word of the enterprise spread rapidly through Violet’s student network and Todora’s friends. The cast and crew included students from Monroe and Central high schools, Convent of the Visitation School, Summit School, St. Joseph’s Academy, Cretin, and St. Thomas Academy. In the mode of operetta school productions, Come What May received extensive media attention, including a full-page feature in the St. Paul Dispatch.

The production played to sold-out houses and achieved its goal. Thanks to lively ticket sales and special gifts from audience members, Todora had a healthy fund to support her Oberlin education. She later returned to the Twin Cities, starring in the Minnesota Opera’s 1976 production of Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and the 1980 production of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow.

Come What May gave those involved real experience and insights into enterprise organization, fundraising, and theatrical production. In addition to their roles in the cast, troupe members served as company manager, composer, playwright and lyricist, and stage and lighting designers. The company literally built the stage within the barn. Summit School and St. Paul Academy continued to use the venue for productions for many years.

Unforgettable

Former students, most now in their sixties and seventies, have vivid memories of Violet and her impact on their lives. Her name conjures the violet-hued aura that surrounded her. As Christmas gifts, they recall bestowing violet powder puffs, pens, linen hankies, and other tchotchkes. Her holiday tree was flocked violet and festooned with amethyst ornaments. They clearly and fondly remember lyrics to operettas and sing them at the drop of a hat.

Violet’s ideals of community, cooperation, and love of music had profound and lasting impacts. Students learned through real experience at young ages what it takes to make a show. “She was a trip,” commented her former voice student and Hayloft Theatre partner Wood Rockwell. “She gave her students exposure to real adult theater and musical performance.” Her ventures to support youth-led musicals fostered a new generation of theatrical professionals and nonprofit leaders.

Violet and Ralph moved from their Macalester Groveland duplex to Kellogg Square apartments in the early 1970s, as both experienced declining health. Even then, Violet continued to sing, forming a group of young male vocalists to back up her performances in the facility’s reception room. She died on September 14, 1977. Those who attended her funeral at House of Hope Presbyterian Church smiled as the casket passed—it was encrusted with glittering violet jewels.

“What matters is to continue singing and it’s surprising how many places there are to sing if you want to.”
    —Violet Gould, March 22, 1953

Acknowledgments: The author is grateful for the insights and assistance of Linda Kelsey, Binky Wood Rockwell, James Jardine, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, and Molly O’Shaughnessy; librarians at the Minnesota Historical Society’s Gale Family Library, George Latimer Central Library’s St. Paul Collection, and University of Minnesota Elmer L. Andersen Library. Thanks especially to Molly Larson for her editorial assistance and insights and to photographer Andy King.

Christine Podas-Larson is the founder of Public Art Saint Paul. She was a student in the Violet Gould Operetta School from 1958 to 1962; was in the cast and served as company manager of Hayloft Theatre in 1964; and participated in the St. Paul Opera Workshop production of Showboat in 1965.