Christine Johnson (actress)

Christine Johnson Smith (September 8, 1911 – June 9, 2010), 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.

Johnson was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky 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.

...
Wikipedia