Leonora Sparkes

An English soprano, born in Gloucestershire, whom Andreas Dippel heard at Covent Garden and engaged for the Metropolitan Opera. She made her debut there on the opening night of 1908, in the Aida with which Toscanini also began at the house, and sang some six hundred performances there by 1921, Aida and Die Walküre most often. She was Xenia in the Met's first Boris Godunov in 1913, and created Nichette in Herbert's Madeleine in 1914, Toniotta in Giordano's Madame Sans-Gêne in 1915 and, in December 1918, the infirmary sister in Suor Angelica. She died in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1969.