Marcella Craft: Riverside’s Own Easter Soloist

For the second annual Mt. Rubidoux Easter Sunrise Service, a soloist was added to the program. Harry Girard, the composer of the music for the Passion Play, and his wife sang solos, which became a regular feature of the Easter Sunrise Services. One regular soloist was Riverside opera diva Marcella Craft.

Marcella Craft, Riverside’s opera star, came home for the 1915 service. Sarah Marcia Craft was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 11, 1874. She and her parents moved to Riverside in 1893. She demonstrated musical talent from her early years, and soon after arriving in Riverside, she sang at several events. Two years after graduating from Riverside High School, she traveled first to the East Coast and later to Europe to study opera. Several Riverside businessmen, including Frank Miller, helped support her financially. While studying and performing in Europe, she changed her stage name to Marcella. She became a celebrated opera singer at the Munich Opera. When Craft and her mother returned for a visit in 1909, they stayed at the Mission Inn. Then, when they returned to Riverside in 1914 because of the impending war, they again took up residence at the Mission Inn.

In 1915, Marcella first appeared as a soloist for the annual Easter Sunrise Service. Miss Craft was thrilled to be back home in Riverside for this event. She told the Daily Press, “How good it is to be here among friends whom I know to be friends. How good it is to be with my own people; people I have known all my life. It is a pleasure I have always looked forward to, and I can only say that I am happy to have the opportunity to sing on Easter morning for Riverside.”

For this 1915 service, the cross was hung with diamonds of glass and illuminated with searchlights for three hours before the service, casting a shining brilliance in the dark night. Some initial discussions regarding illuminating the cross included the idea of shining a searchlight on the cross from the ornamented smokestack at the Mission Inn. Walter Ryan from the Panama-Pacific Exposition said that was a possible placement for the searchlights. The final decision placed the lights much closer. A picture taken by Harry Scott of the illuminated cross shows the spotlights located just below the cross. A specially raised platform was built east of the summit, where the main participants were placed.

Carrie Jacobs Bond also returned that year, having written a special song for the occasion, Anthem to the Easter Dawn, sung by Marcella Craft. Bond related an interesting story about this service, “I wrote an anthem to be sung at the Easter morning service. Six hundred people had been brought from Los Angeles by Mr. Carl Bronson, who was to direct their singing of the anthem. A full band from Riverside was to accompany them, and Madame Marcella Craft was the soloist. The orchestra and the choir arrived at the top of the mountain in plenty of time, but the crowd was so dense that Mr. Bronson, the director, was not able to get through, and as the sun does not wait for anyone, it commenced to rise and the anthem had to be sung as the sun was rising. Evidently, those people thought they could sing without a director. The band began and so did the singers, but not within two bars were they together. The band was playing as well as it could, and as loudly, and the singers were doing their best. I was just far enough away to be able to hear the most awful discords I had ever heard in my life. I walked straight up that perpendicular hill, cried to those singers, Stop! Stop! Of course, they could not hear me, but they saw me waving my hands wildly and stop they did. The band saved the day and Marcella Craft sang the solo beautifully, but I think it was one of the most embarrassing moments.”

None of the newspaper accounts mention this calamity. Instead, they praise the choir’s work, especially Miss Craft’s singing. The reporter raved, “Clear and beautiful above the great chorus rose her voice, carrying the glorious Easter message of the risen Lord.”

In addition to the Bond anthem, she sang two other solos: Hear Ye! Israel! and The Holy City. The 1915 Easter service also witnessed the flags of the nations at war flying beneath the cross while a prayer for peace was offered.

Another first in 1915 was the introduction of special excursions to bring people to Riverside for the event. On Saturday, April 3, the Southern Pacific ran a special train consisting of eight Pullman cars that carried 142 people from Los Angeles. Most of these were choir members from the First Methodist Church in Los Angeles. The train remained on a siding in Riverside and returned to Los Angeles on Sunday evening. In addition, the Pacific Electric ran special excursion cars from Los Angeles, Corona, Redlands, San Bernardino, Arlington, and other communities. The estimate of the number of pilgrims was six thousand who ascended by auto and another eight to nine thousand who walked up the paths.

As part of the 1916 and 1917 Mount Rubidoux Easter Sunrise Services, Craft reprised her solo, Mendelssohn’s Hear Ye, Israel, and sang other anthems with the chorus.

Following the 1919 Easter service, a reporter lauded Marcella’s singing, A hush, more solemn than it had been before, if that could be, fell again and now it was broken by the sweet and clear voice of Riverside’s songbird, Marcella Craft, singing to the distant hills and the valleys between, and the people she loves: ‘Hear Ye Israel.’ The wondrous notes were thrown afar, and thrilled the multitude. It seemed that in the stillness of the morning they might have been heard upon the far mountain tops. The listeners remained as still as the rocks around them while she sang.

After the service, Miss Craft posed for a picture with some of the veterans who were in Riverside for the event, having recently served in the war.

For the 1920 service, Craft performed with the chorus and as a soloist, but was drowned out by the presence of a private airplane. This necessitated the Riverside Chief of Police to issue a warning in 1921 for private airplanes to stay away from the mountain during the time of the service. For the 1921 and 1922 services, Craft would again perform as a soloist and with the chorus.

After singing at the 1922 Mount Rubidoux Easter Sunrise Service, Craft returned to Germany, feeling that Europe had stabilized following World War I.

Her concert and teaching obligations prevented her from returning to Riverside to sing for the 1923 Mount Rubidoux Easter Sunrise Service. In 1924, all the usual preparations were made. Marcella Craft left Europe early to return to Riverside for Easter; the choirs were trained, the trumpeter was lined up, and Dewitt Hutchings was ready to read once more the poem, God of the Open Air. However, on Thursday of Holy Week, only days before Easter, the committee in charge of the event met and unanimously canceled the event for 1924. Why? Hoof-and-mouth disease was ravaging areas in California, and there was fear of its spreading.

Some Easter celebrations were held that year. Frank Miller arranged a special Easter service at 9:00 a.m. at the Glenwood Mission Inn, which included all the features of a sunrise service. Marcella Craft sang several solos, and Helen Hancock played the cornet solo The Holy City. Dewitt Hutchings read the poem he had read almost every year since 1911, and the people sang In the Cross of Christ I Glory.

In 1932, when Hitler came to power, Craft needed to leave Europe again, and she returned to Riverside, keeping a promise she had made years before. In return for her hometown’s support during her musical training and international singing career, she had vowed to return and give back to her beloved Riverside.

In 1933, Craft performed in her eighth and final Mount Rubidoux Easter Sunrise Service in the absence of Elsie Younggren-Carlstrom, who had been singing for the services since 1925. She sang Hear Ye, Israel, which she had often sung at previous Mount Rubidoux Easter Sunrise Services, and two anthems with a chorus.

Marcella Craft joined the choir for the opening song in 1915, but her start was not auspicious. Yet, with her clear and strong singing, she rescued the day. And she went on to sing in seven more Easter services, gracing Riverside with her voice from the top of Mount Rubidoux to help celebrate Easter morning.

For more information on Marcella Craft, read Marcella Craft – Riverside’s International Opera Star by Cindy Patton in the Journal of the Riverside Historical Society, Number 19, January 2015. To learn more about the Mount Rubidoux Easter Sunrise Services, read Anecdotes on Mount Rubidoux and Frank A. Miller.