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The story of Irene Salemka: A 'little girl from Weyburn' who went on to become a European opera star

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Irene Salemka had sung in some of the world’s most lavish opera houses, but for her nephew, one of her most-cherished performances was in a Prince Albert church. 

Peter McGillivray still remembers how excited he and his sister were while watching their aunt, who was a superstar of Europe’s opera scene in her youth. 

“We just thought that she was the most glamorous thing that we had ever laid eyes on,” said McGillivray, who now lives in Sudbury, Ont. 

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It was around 1980, and Salemka sang Albert Hay Malotte’s The Lord’s Prayer at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church. McGillivray’s mother Kathleen accompanied Salemka on piano.

The girl who grew up in Weyburn got her start by winning singing contests in Saskatchewan. She would grow into a woman whose voice would be heard at opera houses across Europe during the 1950s and 1960s.

A picture of Irene Salemka from 1965.
A picture of Irene Salemka from 1965.  Photo by Leader-Post archives /-

One of her most prestigious positions was as the lead soprano at the Frankfurt State Opera, which she joined in 1957 at the age of 29.

“Basically she left to go to Germany and forge this career with some of the most probably intimidating musicians of the age. I mean, it’s pretty amazing what she accomplished,” said McGillivray.

Thanks to his aunt, opera wasn’t a strange, foreign art to McGillivray when he was a child. It became part of his family, with opera frequently heard in his home. He eventually decided to pursue a career in the field himself, and now tours Canada as a professional opera singer. McGillivray still visits with his aunt, now 88, at her home in Collingwood, Ont. — except now he does the singing.

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Salemka was diagnosed with dementia eight years ago. When McGillivray sings to his aunt, he’s positive she recognizes the lyrics from some of the operas she performed in numerous times.

“If I sing something from La boheme or act two of Madama Butterfly, you can tell that even though she’s not doing a lot of talking right now, you can tell there’s an impetus, that she wants to join in the song and keep the song going. So that’s kind of a neat thing,” said McGillivray.

Salemka’s husband of 40 years is James McGillivray. The story of their relationship is filled with so many dramatic twists, it could easily have come from one of the operas in which Salemka performed. 

Salemka is no longer able to tell her own story due to her dementia. James is now her voice, sharing the anecdotes and memories that Salemka once so easily recalled. 

Irene Salemka photographed during a European production of The Merry Widow.
Irene Salemka photographed during a European production of The Merry Widow. -

He remembers his wife telling him the story of her surreal experience walking down a stairway on stage during at the Volkstoper Opera House in Vienna, Austria.

“She was always a little girl from Weyburn, Sask., and felt kind of amazed that there she was in the Volksoper,” said James from their home in Collingwood. 

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James can still describe his wife’s voice as if he’s hearing it right now.

“It was light, and yet it had an ability to cut through an orchestra so that you could really hear it, and hear it in its beauty, even in a fairly large opera house,” he said.

Born in Friedensfeld, Man., in 1928, Salemka was 11 when her family moved to Weyburn. That’s where James first laid eyes on the girl who would become his future bride. They met in high school.

He recalls one of his wife’s childhood friends telling him how Salemka’s interest in singing began at a young age.

“Irene began performing in her garage, and she would sing Somewhere over the Rainbow for these other kids in the neighbourhood,” said James. “She charged them two cents admission.”

That garage belonged to the family of Berty-Lou Dreis. She remembers how Salemka sat on the end of the radiator in her home and sang Some Day My Prince Will Come, from Disney’s Snow White.

A photo of Irene Salemka taken in Europe with an autograph addressed to her mother.
A photo of Irene Salemka taken in Europe with an autograph addressed to her mother. Photo by Courtesy James McGillivray /-

“I’m not a music critic, but I knew she could sing way back then,” said Dreis, who still lives in Weyburn. She described Salemka as “an ordinary teenager.”

At 13, Salemka already knew she wanted to become an opera singer, despite never having seen a production. Her only exposure to opera was listening to CBC radio’s Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.

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She made her own radio debut in 1946 during an amateur program in Weyburn. When she moved to Regina as a 19-year-old, she spent her days working as a stenographer and her nights studying at the conservatory of music. Salemka flourished, winning a provincial music competition in 1949. Two years later, she was recognized as an up-and-coming performer when she won CBC’s national talent competition Opportunity Knocks.

Salemka’s father, a Lutheran minister named August Paul Salemka, had warned his daughter that her chosen career path wouldn’t be easy. It didn’t deter her. 

“There was just nothing else I wanted to do,” Salemka told the Leader-Post in a 1980 interview. “I was driven, and I was able to succeed.”

Salemka received her first role in an opera production in 1952 when she auditioned for a Montreal Festival production of Romeo and Juliet. She originally just tried for a role in the chorus but made such an impression that the director cast her as Juliet. Remarkably, at that point Salemka had still never seen a full opera production.

The next year, Salemka made her debut with the Canadian Opera Company (COC) in Toronto in one of her best-known roles, Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly. The opera is based on a 1903 short story about an American naval officer who falls in love with a Japanese geisha. 

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Ezra Schabas was one of the people in the audience for that performance.

“We thought very highly of her. She was a very good actress, very dramatic, good voice,” said Schabas, who previously worked with the COC, and later wrote a book on the opera company’s history. 

Salemka’s next big break came in 1955 when she took part in a contest in which the prize was a role in the New Orleans Opera Company’s production of La Traviata. She was chosen out of 200 singers.

Soon after her performance in New Orleans, Salemka travelled to Florence, Italy, to further study opera — and ended up on stages across Europe. She performed at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, followed by a performance with the Bazel State Opera in Switzerland in 1957.

Irene Salemka with Jean-Pierre Aumont at the opening of the Theatre de Champs Elysee in Paris, France in 1962.
Irene Salemka with Jean-Pierre Aumont at the opening of the Theatre de Champs Elysee in Paris, France in 1962. -

That same year, Salemka became the leading soprano of a major opera company, the Frankfurt State Opera in Germany. While opera singers tend to specialize today, Salemka sang a wide variety of roles during her time in Frankfurt. She appeared as Cleopatra in Julius Ceaesar, Pamina in The Magic Flute and Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi.

“There are no sopranos today that sing the variety of repertoire that she sang,” said her nephew.

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During that time, Salemka also appeared in German film adaptations of such operettas as Madame du Barry and The Merry Widow. And she made records with Deutsche Grammophon, the world’s oldest existing record company.

While based in Germany, Salemka made guest appearances in productions across Europe in cities including Berlin, London, Zurich, Stuttgart, Naples, Milan and Paris.

“Sometimes, I was just amazed thinking here I am with all these sophisticated Europeans who consider opera a part of their life,” Salemka said in the 1980 interview.

Irene Salemka in a photo dated Aug. 23, 1980 from when she was visiting Regina.
Irene Salemka in a photo dated Aug. 23, 1980 from when she was visiting Regina. Photo by Roy Antal /Regina Leader-Post)

James doesn’t think the fame his wife attained in Europe changed her.

“I would say that, relatively speaking, she did not,” he said. “You would expect somebody to change a lot, coming from the Prairies and then achieving significant success in the really bright lights if Europe.”

James recalls his wife telling him how conductors would sometimes have to remind her that she was the star, rather than just another cast member. 

When she came to Weyburn during the summer, Salemka would still visit with Dreis. Her friend rarely talked about her opera career.

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“She didn’t like to brag or anything like that,” said Dreis.

One of the reasons Salemka may have been able to go from a small-town Saskatchewan singer to a European opera star was that the world of opera was much bigger at the time.

“Anybody who could sing really well, there were opportunities all over the place. As compared to today where we have ten times as many good signers, and there are no opportunities for them,” said Schabas.

“It’s a very tight world of opera now,” he said.

Peter credits his aunt’s success with her mastery of the languages used in opera, especially German.

“That was sort of the key to her connecting with these roles in these foreign languages. That can be difficult for English-speaking opera singers to connect with, unless you really feel the language as part of your native tongue, and feel the emotional connection to the language,” he explained.

When she left Saskatchewan to pursue her career, Salemka also slipped from James’s life. Although he tutored her in physics when the two attended Weyburn Collegiate, he never worked up the courage to ask her on a date. 

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“I was a ninny. I really was a ninny,” he said.

While Salemka was rising in the ranks of the opera world, James studied to become a surgeon. The two didn’t meet again until 1973.

James recalls reading in the newspaper that Salemka was scheduled to perform in a production of The Merry Widow at the O’Keefe Centre in Toronto. He made the two-hour drive in from Collingwood so he could meet his high school crush. James had never forgotten the girl from Weyburn. 

“It’d be fair to say that she was my secret heartthrob.”

James met Salemka backstage after her performance, which she recounted in her 1980 interview.

“We hadn’t seen each other in about 20 years. He just said, ‘I’m from Weyburn, and we went to school there.’ And that was how it started,” she said. “Sounds like a Harlequin romance, doesn’t it?”

Salemka believed that had she been reunited with James earlier in her life, they may not have ended up together because of her opera career.

“If I had met my husband then, charming as he is, I wouldn’t have been interested,” she said. “I was so driven because, after all, a singer doesn’t have that long of a career. And like an athlete, you’re dependent on a muscle to make a living.”

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The two were married in 1977 and settled in Collingwood. 

A photo of James McGillivray and Irene Salemka taken in 1982
A photo of James McGillivray and Irene Salemka taken in 1982 Photo by Photo courtesy James MGillivray

Salemka returned frequently to Saskatchewan to perform and visit her parents during the summers. In 1972, she was awarded an honorary law degree from the University of Saskatchewan, and in 1980 she was a featured guest at Celebrate Saskatchewan festivities in Regina.

“I always came back, and I still consider this my home. I can’t think of any place I’d rather be in August (than) in Saskatchewan. And here I am back again,” said Salemka at the time.

Like her memories, Salemka’s mark on the world of opera has faded over the years. 

Some of the only preservations of Salemka’s voice exist at the German National Library or on scarce albums for sale online. The rest of Salemka’s opera career is saved and treasured in the personal collections that James and Peter have kept in boxes of CDs and photo albums in their homes. 

In spite of her dementia, Peter remains confident memories of some of the songs and performances on those European stages so long ago still linger for his aunt. He believes the constant repetition and memorization of his own opera roles have permanently embedded them in his memory, and they will never completely disappear. And he thinks his aunt would agree. 

“Those are the things that have given me the most joy in my life, and I think it’s probably a pretty similar thing for Irene.”

mmelnychuk@postmedia.com

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