Rachel Morton Harris

Rachel Emma Farra Morton Harris (September 11, 1888 – April 17, 1982) was an American concert and operatic soprano, active in the 1910s and 1920s. Later in life she was a music critic and voice teacher in Long Beach, California.

Morton was born in Everett, Massachusetts, the daughter of Frederick William Morton and Rose Valier Morton.^[1][2] She graduated from Everett High School^[3] and studied for a musical career in Berlin, and with Jean de Reszke at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau.^[4][5] One of her teachers, Isidore Luckstone, was also her accompanist.^[6][7]

Harris, a soprano, married Jaffrey Harris, a music professor at the Iowa State College,^[8] and she performed a soloist there in 1916.^[9][10] She gave her New York debut recital at Aeolian Hall in April 1919, demonstrating the "rich and luscious quality" of her voice as well as its "ample carrying power".^[11] "Not often does a young singer make so definitely good a first impression as did Rachel Morton Harris at her debut," commented the Brooklyn Eagle about that performance.^[6] She was a soloist in a 1920 performance of Handel's Elijah oratorio, along with Frieda Hempel and Merle Alcock, with the New York Symphony Orchestra and the New York Oratorio Society, conducted by Walter Damrosch.^[12] She also sang at Boston's Jordan Hall in 1920.^[13][14] In 1921 she was a soloist with the Ottawa Symphony,^[15] sang in a program for the Beethoven Society with violinist Albert Vertchamp,^[16] and gave a series of joint recitals with baritone Francis Rogers at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.^[17] In December 1921, she sang at Carnegie Hall.^[18] and she sang again at the Town Hall in March 1922.^[19]

She sang in operas in Europe and Great Britain for several seasons in the 1920s,^[1][5][20] before returning to New York in 1928.^[21] In 1930 she gave another recital at the Town Hall venue, with her husband as her accompanist.^[22] In 1933 the Harrises performed at a musicale for the Bronxville Woman's Club,^[23] and at a benefit concert for unemployed musicians in White Plains.^[24] She gave another program for the Bronxville Woman's Club in 1935.^[25]

In her later years, Morton was based in southern California,^[26] where she continued to perform,^[27][28] and was a music critic for the Long Beach Press-Telegram from 1956 to 1964.^[29][30] She also taught voice students from her own studio, and at Long Beach State College.^[31]

In 1914, Morton married pianist, conductor, and music professor Jaffrey C. Harris.^[8][23] She retired to Carmel in 1967, and died there in 1982, at the age of 93.^[30]

• "Singer Rachel Morton and her husband Jaffrey Harris (pianist) at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin", a 1930 photograph at Getty Images