Brema, Marie

1856-

Brilliant dramatic soprano. Her real name was Minny Fehrman, and although she was born in Liverpool, her father was a German and her mother an American, a native of Richmond, Virginia. At the age of eighteen she was married to Mr. Arthur Braun of Liverpool, and did not consider a musical career seriously until 1890, when she began studying with Henschel. Later she studied with Mr. Blume and Madame Bessie Cox. Since making her debut in 1891, in Schubert's Ganymede, she has appeared most successfully in many roles, in London, Paris and Brussels, beside singing twice at Bayreuth in Wagnerian opera and making a tour through America in 1894 with the Damrosch Company. She sang the part of Beatrice at the first production of Stanford's Much Ado About Nothing in 1901. She has also been heard at all the most important English festivals of the last ten years, notably at the Birmingham Festival of 1900, when she sang The Angel, in Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. Among Madame Brema's celebrated roles are Orpheus in Gluck's opera of that name, Ortrude in Lohengrin and Brangane in Tristan and Isolde.