She began singing as a soloist at age 14 in the Old Church of Hopewell, later performing in Utica (New York) and on Long Island. After a period working as a school teacher, she moved to Europe in 1891. There, she was trained by Aglaia Orgeni in Dresden and further studied with Marianne Brandt in Vienna.

She made her debut in 1894 at the Berlin Court Opera as Fides in G. Meyerbeer’s Le prophète. Her first major success came in 1895 with a concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus under Carl Reinecke. That same year, she was engaged by the Vienna Court Opera, where she performed Fides and Azucena in Il Trovatore and remained until 1903. In 1896, she appeared in the Vienna premiere of W. Kienzl’s Der Evangelimann. At the Salzburg Mozart Festival in 1901, she created the role of Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni.

In 1903, after a dispute with Gustav Mahler, she left the Vienna Opera House and joined the Metropolitan Opera in New York, making her debut as Amneris in Aida. At the Met, she performed in productions of Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, Faust, La Gioconda, Martha, La Favorita, and Lucrezia Borgia (1904). In 1905, she participated in the premiere of Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus.

She then joined the Court Opera in Berlin for the 1906-07 season and became a celebrated artist at the Hamburg Opera from 1907 to 1912. At Covent Garden in London, she performed as Amneris, Ortrud, Fricka, Waltraute, Isolde, Thirza in Ethel Smith’s The Wreckers, and made her English premiere as Elektra in Richard Strauss’s Elektra on October 19, 1910.

She made notable guest appearances in Brussels, Leipzig, Frankfurt (1907-12), Cologne, and Prague, gaining particular acclaim for her interpretations of Wagner’s operas. At the Bayreuth Festival in 1908, she sang Kundry in Parsifal and Ortrud in Lohengrin. In 1910, she triumphed in Holland’s Strauss Festival as Salome and Elektra. At the Beethoven Festival in The Hague in 1909, she performed Leonore in Fidelio under Willem Mengelberg.

From 1912 to 1917, she was a member of the Court Opera in Munich. Her farewell performance took place in 1918 at the Municipal Theatre of Elberfeld, where she performed in Der Ring des Nibelungen. After retiring from the stage, she lived in Scheveningen, Holland, until 1919, then moved to Paris. There, she taught voice privately until 1933, when she joined the faculty at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, teaching until 1936. She returned to New York City, where she continued to teach until her death in 1950 at age 79. Among her notable pupils were Irene Dalis and Blanche Thebom.