Maria Montana

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Maria Montana (born Ruth Kellogg Waite; January 23, 1893 – March 16, 1971) was an American opera singer often called either a coloratura or lyric soprano who had training in the Toronto Conservatory of Music and the American Conservancy of Music in Fontainebleau, France. She performed a few years in France and Italy in the earlier 1920s where she picked up the stage name, and then began a prolonged career touring in America soon with the National Music League, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, broadcasts on the NBC Radio Network, and other orchestras across the United States, often returning to Montana, before semi-retiring in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1940. By then she regularly used her stage name as her everyday name and became visible associating with the Baháʼí Faith by 1942. While occasionally performing, she also took part in various projects including meetings for the religion's teachings on the oneness of humanity, was elected as a Minnesota state delegate to the national Baháʼí convention for 1945, voted by mail, at which Helen Elsie Austin was elected as one of the nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baháʼí Faith in the United States. Shoghi Effendi, then the international head of the religion, rolled out plans including goals for the religion in Latin America and Europe. In a few years, after losing her uncle for whom she was a care-giver, and with a renewal of the plans of the international development of Baháʼí communities, she embarked on pioneering for the religion in Europe, mostly Italy, from the late 1950s. While there she sang for the opening of the German Baháʼí House of Worship. She returned to America in the mid-1960s and lived outside of San Diego, California. All along she had maintained private lessons, occasionally sang, and took part in operatic societies and events. She died in a car accident on March 16, 1971.

In the 2010s a New Mexico musical festival began offering an award in her name to some of the contestant singers.