Christine Johnson (actress)
Encyclopedia
Christine Johnson Smith usually credited as Christine Johnson, was an American contralto
opera singer and actress who sang at the Metropolitan Opera
and other opera houses. She is best known, however, for creating the role of Nettie Fowler in the original Broadway
production of Carousel
.
and moved to Owensboro, Kentucky
after her freshman year of high school, graduating from Owensboro High School
in 1929. She showed early promise, starring in school plays and singing in churches. After high school, she studied voice at the Nashville Conservatory of Music and sang for radio station WSM
in Nashville, Tennessee
.
Johnson moved to New York City
in 1937 and began to work with NBC's Radio City Music Hall
and Lyn Murray
and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra
at CBS, sometimes touring in concerts in North America. She studied voice and operatic repertoire in New York with Ernst Knoth and Sidney Dietch. In 1941, she sang Dorabella in Così fan tutte
, opening the Tanglewood
opera house at Lenox, Massachusetts
.
In 1942 she received good notices for the role of Mrs. Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor
. Other roles followed for her, with the New Opera Company of New York under Emil Cooper
, at San Francisco Opera
and elsewhere, in Macbeth
, The Fair at Sorochyntsi, The Queen of Spades
, Cavalleria rusticana
, Carmen
, La forza del destino
, The Girl of the Golden West, the title role in Roberta
, Azucena in Il trovatore
and Madalenna in Rigoletto
. During this period, she also sang at New York's Town Hall
.
In 1943, Johnson won the Metropolitan Opera
auditions, which led to her becoming the youngest person ever to sing the role of Erda in Richard Wagner
's Das Rheingold
at that opera house. She appeared on CBS radio's The Squibb Show twice in 1944. There she sang "It's A Lovely Day" and "My Heart's in the Highlands" with Lyn Murray and His Orchestra.
In 1945, Johnson created the role of Nettie Fowler in Carousel
. Rodgers and Hammerstein
wrote "You'll Never Walk Alone
", which has become a standard, and "June is Busting Out All Over" especially for her. She also sang the role on the show's original cast album
. Johnson stayed with the show for hundreds of performances and then toured and studied in Italy for a time. She rejoined Carousel during the national tour and continued as Nettie through its Broadway revival in 1949.
After Carousel closed, Johnson moved back to Owensboro, where she married surgeon Robert Smith in 1950 and raised two daughters, Robin and Nancy. She taught voice for many years, and one of her pupils was Florence Henderson
. She also served on local arts committees and participated in some local productions. Johnson's husband died in 1959, and she later worked for Texas Gas Transmission Corporation until her retirement.
Johnson died on June 9, 2010 at the age of 98.
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
opera singer and actress who sang at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
and other opera houses. She is best known, however, for creating the role of Nettie Fowler in the original Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
production of Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
.
Biography
Johnson was born in Hopkinsville, KentuckyHopkinsville, Kentucky
Hopkinsville is a city in Christian County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 31,577 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Christian County.- History :...
and moved to Owensboro, Kentucky
Owensboro, Kentucky
Owensboro is the fourth largest city by population in the U.S. state of Kentucky. It is the county seat of Daviess County. It is located on U.S. Route 60 about southeast of Evansville, Indiana, and is the principal city of the Owensboro, Kentucky, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's...
after her freshman year of high school, graduating from Owensboro High School
Owensboro High School
Owensboro High School is a high school located at 1800 Frederica Street in Owensboro, Kentucky. The school's newspaper is The Scoop and its yearbook is the Owensboroan. Owensboro High School is one of only 33 high schools in Kentucky to be listed among the “Best High Schools 2009 Search” published...
in 1929. She showed early promise, starring in school plays and singing in churches. After high school, she studied voice at the Nashville Conservatory of Music and sang for radio station WSM
WSM (AM)
WSM is the callsign of a 50,000 watt AM radio station located in Nashville, Tennessee. Operating at 650 kHz, its clear channel signal can reach much of North America and various countries, especially late at night...
in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
.
Johnson moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1937 and began to work with NBC's Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in New York City's Rockefeller Center. Its nickname is the Showplace of the Nation, and it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city...
and Lyn Murray
Lyn Murray
Lyn Murray was a composer, conductor, and arranger of music for radio, film and television.Born as Lionel Breeze in London, he arrived on American shores to found the Lyn Murray Singers, who became known throughout the United States as the featured group on CBS Radio’s Your Hit Parade...
and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra
Columbia Symphony Orchestra
The Columbia Symphony Orchestra was an orchestra formed by Columbia Records. It provided a vehicle for some of Columbia's better known recording artists to record using only company resources.-Bruno Walter:...
at CBS, sometimes touring in concerts in North America. She studied voice and operatic repertoire in New York with Ernst Knoth and Sidney Dietch. In 1941, she sang Dorabella in Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
, opening the Tanglewood
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937. It was the venue of the Berkshire Festival.- History...
opera house at Lenox, Massachusetts
Lenox, Massachusetts
Lenox is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. Set in Western Massachusetts, it is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 5,077 at the 2000 census. Where the town has a border with Stockbridge is the site of Tanglewood, summer...
.
In 1942 she received good notices for the role of Mrs. Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor (opera)
The Merry Wives of Windsor is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai to a German libretto by Hermann Salomon Mosenthal, based on the play The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare....
. Other roles followed for her, with the New Opera Company of New York under Emil Cooper
Emil Cooper
Emil Albertovich Cooper, also known as Emil Kuper was a Russian conductor and violinist, of English ancestry....
, at San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
and elsewhere, in Macbeth
Macbeth (opera)
Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name...
, The Fair at Sorochyntsi, The Queen of Spades
The Queen of Spades (opera)
The Queen of Spades, Op. 68 is an opera in 3 acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on a short story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The premiere took place in 1890 in St...
, Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
, Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, La forza del destino
La forza del destino
La forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
, The Girl of the Golden West, the title role in Roberta
Roberta
Roberta is a musical from 1933 with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics and book by Otto Harbach. The musical is based on the novel Gowns by Roberta by Alice Duer Miller...
, Azucena in Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
and Madalenna in Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
. During this period, she also sang at New York's Town Hall
The Town Hall
The Town Hall is a performance space, located at 123 West 43rd Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, in New York City. It seats approximately 1,500 people.-History:...
.
In 1943, Johnson won the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
auditions, which led to her becoming the youngest person ever to sing the role of Erda in Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Das Rheingold
Das Rheingold
is the first of the four operas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . It was originally written as an introduction to the tripartite Ring, but the cycle is now generally regarded as consisting of four individual operas.Das Rheingold received its premiere at the National Theatre...
at that opera house. She appeared on CBS radio's The Squibb Show twice in 1944. There she sang "It's A Lovely Day" and "My Heart's in the Highlands" with Lyn Murray and His Orchestra.
In 1945, Johnson created the role of Nettie Fowler in Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
. Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
wrote "You'll Never Walk Alone
You'll Never Walk Alone (song)
"You'll Never Walk Alone" is a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.In the musical, in the second act, Nettie Fowler, the cousin of the female protagonist Julie Jordan, sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" to comfort and encourage Julie when her husband, Billy Bigelow, the...
", which has become a standard, and "June is Busting Out All Over" especially for her. She also sang the role on the show's original cast album
Cast recording
A cast recording is a recording of a musical that is intended to document the songs as they were performed in the show and experienced by the audience. An original cast recording, as the name implies, features the voices of the show's original cast...
. Johnson stayed with the show for hundreds of performances and then toured and studied in Italy for a time. She rejoined Carousel during the national tour and continued as Nettie through its Broadway revival in 1949.
After Carousel closed, Johnson moved back to Owensboro, where she married surgeon Robert Smith in 1950 and raised two daughters, Robin and Nancy. She taught voice for many years, and one of her pupils was Florence Henderson
Florence Henderson
Florence Agnes Henderson is an American actress and singer. She is perhaps best known for her role of Carol Brady on the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974...
. She also served on local arts committees and participated in some local productions. Johnson's husband died in 1959, and she later worked for Texas Gas Transmission Corporation until her retirement.
Johnson died on June 9, 2010 at the age of 98.