Metropolitan Opera star comes home to sing

OCT. 13 , 1943

Metropolitan Opera star Mona Paulee returned “home” for the first time in 20 years to perform at McDougall United Church.

The 31-year-old mezzo-soprano arrived on a snowy day looking every inch a star, with a fur coat draped over her shoulders. She was the first and only Met star born in Edmonton.

Paulee was born on Clark Street (now 105th Street) but when she was 11, moved to the United States where her father was a theatre owner in the pre-talking picture days.

She started to sing seriously after she won an amateur contest in a theatre in Portland, Ore. She worked in a bakeshop to finance her vocal lessons. She also sang with a vaudeville show and a nightclub troupe on the West Coast.

Paulee sang several minor roles with the San Francisco Opera company, once as a white-robed Valkyrie in the Wagner opera. “She was on and off the stage so fast, shrieking ‘Ho-yo-to-ho!’, her proud parents in the audience didn’t even have time to pick her out of the chorus,” the Journal story said.

In 1941 she decided it was “now or never” and travelled to New York before the shadow of the Second World War “stifled her ambitions.”

She developed bronchial pneumonia shortly before she was to sing in a Metropolitan Opera audition contest. The date was postponed a week, but still not recov- ered, she defied doctor’s orders and sang anyway with a fever of 103F. Paulee won the contest and the opportunity to sing with The Met.

The Journal music critic said Paulee thrilled the Edmonton audience with her inspiring performance.

Paulee would stay on the Met roster as a soloist for many years. Most of her roles were minor, though she occasionally made her way to centre stage. In later years, she taught at California State University, Los Angeles, retiring in 1987.

She died in 1995 in Los Angeles, a month shy of her 83rd birthday.