published, which was included in the first book of the Sovremennik magazine (1911. Jan. P. 119-154). A.V. Amfiteatrov, who highly participated in creating of this magazine, wrote about Isa Kreymer to Sholom Aleichem on November 21, 1910: "It would be nice to receive your story as going into the first book. <...> Send it in the original language. I have a very good translator that I want to try on your story". She made her professional opera debut in 1911 at the Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona as Mimì in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème to the Rodolfo of Tito Schipa. She was then active as principal artist at the Mariinsky Theatre (then known as the Petrograd Opera) in Saint Petersburg where she starred in several operettas and was heard in various works from the concert repertoire. Some of the roles she sang there were Dolly in Franz Lehár's Endlich allein, Elvira in Lehar's Die ideale Gattin, Helen in Oskar Nedbal's Polská krev, and Laura in Karl Millöcker's Der Bettelstudent. She was later active at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1915. In 1914, Kremer returned to Odessa and for two years appeared in roles at the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater; including portraying Mimì and the role of Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata. "It was there she first discovered that her singing talent was not most suited to arias and she turned to folk music in Yiddish and other languages." She became highly active in intellectual circles, and notably became close friends with Sholem Aleichem, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Mendele Mocher Sforim, and Mark Warshawski. It was Bialik who inspired her to begin collecting Yiddish music and to include it in her concerts. Up to this point, Yiddish music had been performed solely by men, usually hazzans, within concerts. She gave her first folk concert in Moscow and it was a great success; from there she went to Turkey and later toured in Poland, German, France, England and elsewhere. She married Israel Heifetz, Russian Jewish editor of the Odessa News, who was 27 years older than she was. Their marriage produced one child, their daughter Toussia who was born in 1917. In 1922, Kremer came to America, where her concerts were very successful. M. Osherovitsh wrote: "Hearing Isa Kremer sing Yiddish folksongs is a must for the Jewish intelligentsia. While Odessa was her home, Kremer was also actively performing as a