Fine bust-length Mishkin photograph of the noted German soprano. Together with autograph note on an album leaf: "Souvenir de Johanna Gadski-Tauscher April 1913.

Photograph 7-15/16" x 6" (202 x 152 mm.); album leaf 5-1/2" x 8-1/16" (140 x 205 mm.). From the Mishkin studio in New York, with his copyright to lower outer corner.

Both items laid down to mounting sheet at corners of verso. Johanna Gadski was a prominent German soprano. "Between 1900 and 1917, however, her main centre was the Metropolitan, with whose company (after a previous appearance as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser on tour in Philadelphia) she made her house début on 6 January 1900 as Senta; she became one of its most valuable Brünnhildes and Isoldes, excelling also in many Verdi roles such as Aida, Leonora (Il trovatore) and Amelia... From 1929 until her death (in a car accident) she was active and successful in a Wagnerian touring company in the USA organized at first by Sol Hurok and then by herself. She sang even the heaviest Wagner roles with unfailing beauty of voice and purity of style, and showed the same qualities in her Italian parts. Her powers are well documented in the large number of records which she made between 1903 and 1917, notably in her Wagner excerpts and in scenes from Aida and Il trovatore with Caruso, Homer and Amato." Desmond Shawe-Taylor in Grove Music Online.

Herman Mishkin (1870-1948) served as the Metropolitan Opera's official portraitist from 1908-1932, producing an important body of work documenting "The Golden Age of Opera.