Homegrown Diva
From Madison, Wisconsin, to the Metropolitan Opera, Olivia (Goldenberger) Monona’s life was marked by serendipity and unexpected fame. Her career, first as a chorister and later a comprimaria (second lead singer) with the newly formed Chicago Grand Opera Company (CGOC), and then as a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York, developed in tandem with the rising tide of operatic enthusiasm in the United States at the start of the twentieth century. Her name, however, doesn’t appear in any articles or books about the opera of that time period, despite the unusual nature and duration of her career. Olivia Monona’s papers are held by the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives and Chicago’s Newberry Library, but these collections of scrapbooks, diaries, letters, memoir fragments, newspaper clippings, postcards, and photographs are treasure troves just waiting to be explored by scholars of music, Madison and Chicago history, and twentieth-century America.
Olivia Goldenberger didn’t start out wanting to be an opera singer. Born in Madison on April 15, 1889, to Benedict and Estella Goldenberger, Olivia (or “Olive,” as she was called by friends and family) was a curious, talented, and observant girl, meticulously recording the details of her vocal and language lessons, visits with friends and family, and attendance at concerts and plays in small pocket diaries beginning in 1901. With admirable tenacity, Olivia wrote about her experiences nearly every day, noting everything from outings with friends and what she studied in school to the plays and concerts that she attended.
She came from a family that had deep ties to Madison. Goldenbergers were among the first settlers in the city, with Benedict Goldenberger (1829–1901) immigrating from Switzerland in 1858 and establishing a cooperage and cider mill at his house on the 800 block of University Avenue. Of his and his wife Elizabeth’s nine children, Benedict “Dick” Goldenberger (Olivia’s father) was the only one born in South Hadley Falls, Massachusetts, where the family was living in the late 1850s. The Goldenbergers moved to Madison, and Benedict graduated from the University of Wisconsin. In 1888, he married Estella Moessner of Madison and started working as a railway mail clerk.1
Estella’s mother, Catherine Moessner, owned a confectionary and bakery, along with her husband, Frederick, in the small red brick Italianate building at 211 King Street from 1869 until 1893. Notably, Catherine advocated establishing Madison’s first kindergarten, an idea imported from her native Germany. The school opened in Turner Hall in 1877, and she was its first teacher.2
By 1900, the Goldenbergers were living at 127 North Hamilton Street in downtown Madison, where they remained for many years. Olivia and her brother Benjamin, four years her junior, were raised in what appears to be a solidly middle-class, Christian household, where church attendance was a part of the weekly routine, though Olivia’s diary entries don’t suggest that she or the family were particularly religious.3
At twelve years old, Olivia received her first diary, duly recording her height and weight as “100 lbs, 4'10".” Her motto, she explains on January 3, 1901, was to “Take everything as it comes and make the, put on by the Choral Union in the Congregational Church in January.
