Zabetta Brenska

Zabetta Brenska, born Elizabeth Breen, was an American singer.

Early life

Elizabeth Breen was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of Thomas M. Breen and Rachel Ann Eastwood Breen. Her paternal grandparents Matthias and Elizabeth Breen were born in Ireland. She received musical training in Florence.

Brenska, who sang as a mezzo-soprano or contralto, gave recitals and concerts, sometimes sharing the stage with her first husband, Paul Althouse. She also assisted Althouse with his operatic career, organizing and hand-copying his music and translations. "It was one of our little 'pacts' that after our wedding I should be allowed to work at my music," she explained to an interviewer in 1917. She expressed admiration for the songs of Black composer Harry T. Burleigh.
After her second marriage, she lived in the Ringoes section of East Amwell Township, New Jersey and directed community theatre productions and wartime benefit shows there. She also taught Red Cross first aid classes.

Elizabeth Breen married opera singer Paul Shearer Althouse in 1914; they had daughters Rita Mary and Pauline, before they separated in the 1920s and divorced in 1930. She married again in 1932, to physician Alexander Berthold Timm, a widower with two children, Alexander and Renee. She died in 1966, aged 70 years, in New York City.