Fabbri, Inez (real name, Agnes Schmidt)
Fabbri, Inez (real name, Agnes Schmidt)
Fabbri, Inez (real name, Agnes Schmidt), Austrian- American soprano and operatic impresario; b. Vienna, Jan. 26, 1831; d. San Francisco, Aug. 30, 1909. She was trained in Vienna and made her operatic debut as Abigail in Lucrezia Borgia in Kaschau on Oct. 5, 1847. In 1857 she sang at the Hamburg Opera and then joined the traveling opera company of Richard Mulder (b. Amsterdam, Dec. 31, 1822; d. San Francisco, Dec. 22, 1874). She toured throughout North and South America with his company, eventually becoming his wife and adopting the professional name of Inez Fabbri. In 1860 she attracted much notice when she appeared at N.Y/s Winter Gardens as a rival to Adelina Patti. After singing at the Frankfurt am Main Stadttheater (1864–70), she and her husband teamed up with the Theodore Habelmann-Karl Formes troupe in N.Y. in 1872, but that same year they went to San Francisco to produce operas until Mulder’s death. In 1877 she married the German tenor Jacob Miiller (1845–1901), and remained active as a singer until 1880. After teaching voice in Los Angeles (1892–99), she settled in San Francisco.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire