1864–1942 · United States · 20th century
Eleanor Everest Freer (1864–1942) was an American composer and music organiser, born in Philadelphia and died in Chicago. She wrote mostly songs and operas, and in Chicago she became one of the founders of the American Opera Society. The site offers her works for voice and piano.
Eleanor Everest was born on 14 May 1864 in Philadelphia. At birth she was named Eleanor Warner Everest. Her parents were Cornelius Everest and Ellen Amelia Everest, formerly Clark.
She studied music in Paris. Her singing teacher was Mathilde Marchesi, and her teacher of composition was Benjamin Godard.
Eleanor taught music in Philadelphia and New York City. Her husband, from 1893, was Archibald Edward Freer (1862–1943), a doctor living in Chicago. They had a daughter.
In 1899 the family moved to Chicago. There Eleanor studied the theory of music under Bernhard Ziehn.
Freer was a active supporter of American opera and of opera sung in English. In 1921 she took part in setting up the foundation Opera in Our Language, and in 1922 the David Bispham Memorial Fund. The Bispham fund arranged concerts of American composers and presented the Bispham Medal.
In 1924 the two organisations merged into the American Opera Society of Chicago. It campaigned for and popularised operas by American composers. The Bispham Medal went, for example, to Frederick Converse for the opera The Pipe of Desire, the first American opera staged at the Metropolitan Opera, and to George Gershwin for Porgy and Bess. All of this was done through Freer's efforts and partly with her own money.
The American Opera Company often staged her one-act opera The Legend of the Piper between 1928 and 1929. In 1934 Freer received a doctorate in music from the Boguslawski College of Music.
Eleanor Everest Freer died in Chicago on 13 December 1942.
Freer left mostly vocal music and operas. Her catalogue counts eleven operas and over 150 songs; a good number were issued in collections. Vocal cycles such as Five Songs to Spring and Six Songs to Nature became her first material for one-act chamber operas, most often on fairy-tale subjects.
Her operas include Massimilliano, the Court Jester (1925), first staged in Philadelphia and warmly received by the public, A Christmass Tale, Joan of Arc (1929), A Legend of Spain (1931) and The Legend of the Piper. The opera The Brownings Go to Italy (1936) stands apart: it is based on an episode from the life of Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Browning.
The site has two editions by Freer for voice and piano, both at the Advanced level: The boat is chafing at our long delay and Daughter of Egypt, veil thine eyes.