Mary Garden
In his entry on Mary Garden in the 1954 Groves, Richard Aldrich summed up her career: "Her personality counted far more in her performances than her vocal art, which was defective, or her histrionic skill, which was limited and vitiated by many mannerisms." In this new biography of the singer, Michael Turnbull "attempted to expose the perversity of [such] judgements"; but most of the evidence he presents supports rather than refutes Aldrich's judgement.
Mary Garden was born in Aberdeen in 1874 but was brought up in America and had her early music training here. Later, she studied with Trabadelo and Fugere in Paris; and in 1900, with the backing of Sibyl Sanderson, she was offered a beginner's contract at the Opera-Comique as second understudy for the role of Louise in Charpentier's opera. She rehearsed the role, and one evening shortly after the opening, when both the first and second Louises were indisposed, she was sent on to finish the last act. Her own account of the event was more dramatic; she claimed that she studied the role by herself, and on the fateful night stepped up from the audience - a complete unknown - and astonished everyone by singing the role perfectly. Mary was an imaginative woman and a tireless self-promoter. Reporters loved her. They could always count on her to dish the latest operatic gossip, to boast about her triumphs and career plans, her romances and impending engagements to mysterious European princes, Arab sheiks, or captains of industry, and to deliver her latest opinions on love, sex, art, diet, fashion, or whatever subject came up. That she sometimes contradicted herself or expressed conflicting opinions in the same interview seemed only to amuse reporters and delight her fans. Mary's outspokenness and outrageous behavior were regarded as part of her charm.
Not everyone was charmed. Of her voice and singing, few serious critics cared to comment. At her debut, she was judged "a talented amateur" by the French press; of her Thais in New York in 1907, a soft-hearted critic wrote, "her singing was a hindrance rather than an aid"; and in 1913, "she dazzled the eye and pained the ear". Unfazed, she declared, "I have never been a singer; I am a singing-actress". But theater critics complained about her flamboyant acting, her extravagant gestures and affected posing onstage.
The only document we have of her in performance is her 1918 silent film Thais, which Garden herself dismissed because of its old-fashioneded, wide-gestured "operatic" acting. She made very few recordings. She found singing into a horn inhibiting. The scraps of Pelleas and Melisande, (1904), with Debussy at the piano, are of some historic importance, and her 'Ah, fors' e lui... Sempre libera' (in French, 1911) and 'Depuis le jour' (1912) show that she could sing quite well when she put her mind to it - at least in her early years. Her 1926 recording of 'Depuis le jour' captures her voice in its decline.
She sang a total of 35 roles, all of them in French except Victor Herbert's Natoma. She realized early in her career that she could not compete with Melba and Tetrazzini in the great singing roles, and though she did sing Violetta, Tosca, Carmen, and Salome (one wonders how), she prefered to appear in new operas, which would draw press attention. Many of them, by composers like Lambert, Pierne, Bunning, Leroux, Fevrier, and Forrest, were little more than Star Vehicles in which she could appear clothed - or partly unclothed - in picturesque costumes.
In America, she appeared first with Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera and then with the Chicago Opera, where she sang for 20 years and even served, for one financially disastrous year, as "Directa". When her singing career was over, she kept herself in the public eye for a few more years by giving lecture-recitals - more speech than song - that charmed her fans and dismayed her old opera colleagues. In 1949, she penned an autobiography, which her old friend and publicist Carl Van Vechten found so inept he urged her to rewrite it with professional assistance. Instead she chose to "tell" her story to Louis Biancolli, who took down her words in shorthand. The result, Mary Garden's Story, is a foolish book - a self-centered woman's idle chatter, laced with inaccuracies and exaggerations and fantasies.
Turnbull has made a sincere effort to separate fact from fable and set the Mary Garden record straight by pinning down dates and names, the sequence of events, and the professional and personal relationships. He researched newspaper files and theatrical archives in France, America, and Scotland, as well as private collections; but he does not always identify his legitimate sources clearly in the text or notes and relies rather heavily upon unpublished manuscripts, remembered conversations, and second-hand reports of events. Garden's own written accounts were untrustworthy. Her solicitor called her "a vicious liar...she didn't know herself if she was telling the truth or not". Her eccentric behavior and memory lapses in mid-life may have been early indications of physical as well as psychological disorders. She spent her last years confined to a psycho-geriatric ward in Scotland, where she died of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 93.
Turnbull's book has photographs, a catalog of Garden's roles, a discography, bibliography, and notes taken during her 1935 Master-classes. Her comments on Stage Technique are amusing to read, but they aren't likely to be of much help to today's young singing-actresses.