On Saturday, December 14th, Randall Reid-Smith, Curator of the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, will present a special program about the life and career of Eleanor Steber, one of the first American trained opera singers to achieve international recognition. The program will be held at 10:00 in the auditorium on the lower level of West Virginia Independence Hall.

Born in Wheeling in 1914, Steber won the Metropolitan Opera’s auditions in 1940, launching her career with a contract at the Met where she was one of its leading artists through 1961.

Steber built a reputation as a versatile artist, with particular affinity for roles in operas by Mozart, Puccini and Richard Strauss and in French opera. She sang the title role in the premier of Samuel Barber’s opera Vanessa. She commissioned and premiered Barber’s Knoxville Summer of 1915 for soprano and orchestra.

Outside of the Metropolitan Opera Steber was a featured regular on television’s Bell Telephone and Firestone Tire broadcasts. Steber taught voice at the Juilliard School and at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She died in 1990.

Throughout her life she frequently visited and performed in Wheeling; her last performance with the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra was led by guest conductor Arthur Fiedler of the Boston Pops.

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