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. Whil