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📸 Paul Harries
Gladys Swarthout
Opera singer Gladys Swarthout was born in 1904 in Deepwater, Missouri. Swarthout made her operatic debut during the 1924-25 season with the Chicago Civic Opera Company. In 1929, she gave her debut with the Metropolitan Opera, where she would remain for sixteen seasons. Swarthout's repertoire contained more than 25 operas, but she was best known for the title role in Carmen. In 1960, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Gladys Swarthout died in 1969 at the age of 64.
I'm curious
what's your vocal range??
Soprano
Mezzo
Alto
Tenor
Baritone
Bass
Countertenor
Contralto
nuance/bald/results
I'm a soprano but my range is D2-A7 so idk ig nuance for me what range does that go into
I'd love if you reblogged with your ranges in octaves too 😉😉
Oh some muses raring for a Dispatch verse:
Ciryke- obviously. Is anyone surprised? They’re not apart of the company but they cause enough problems that they’re well acquainted with the teams
Dalton & Finley- got hired solely cause their dad is a famous villain and they can’t really get work otherwise. Dalton still calls himself a mad genius but Finley is jaded with the grunt work
Majors- hired out by the government as a test run. Obnoxious tbh
Mezzo- disgruntled former henchman dispatcher
Nny- apart of the z team, besties with Prism, powers are a struggle to use for good
Silhouetta- an up and coming hero! She’s very plucky but very clumsy and inexperienced. She would love waterboy
GILBERT AND SULLIVAN GIRLIES THIS ONE’S FOR YOU!!! Such a pleasure to revisit this aria from my OCU debut!!! Iolanthe will always have such a special place in my heart.
So uh. One of my videos is getting wayyyy more viewership than expected. Was not anticipating this but I'm happy because if it gets traction it can help towards being approved for YouTube's partner program tiers. Which could help with sickly cat costs. Sharing the video here I guess bc why the hell not (also if you subscribe I will love you forever bc 1000 is the sub count needed for the ad revenue tier)
From Opera anecdotes by Mordden, Ethan, 1947-:
Mary Garden
Because her personality mesmerized the public, commentators who never heard her have established the legend that she had no voice. It seems unlikely that a soprano without a voice could have made her debut as Louise — at that, on the stage of the Opera-Comique while the Louise rage was at its height and all Paris flocking to hear it, and at a time when the Opera-Comique boasted a number of first-rate sopranos. True, Garden was a substitute, stepping in for Marthe Rioton at the start of Act Three. It happens, however, that this act begins with "Depuis le jour," the opera's most popular highlight, five minutes of soaring rhapsody. Are we to believe that a soprano without a voice got through two acts of Louise to enchant Paris, Monte Carlo, New York, and Chicago entirely on personality?
There's no question that Garden cut a fascinating figure, offstage as well as on. Where other sopranos sang the standard roles of their vocal category, along the Gilda-Amina-Marguerite or SieglindeDesdemona-Agathe axes, Garden preferred new roles that no one else sang, premieres wherever possible — and roles, especially, that gave Garden a chance to exploit her riveting plastique. No Marguerite for her, but rather Thai's, Tosca, Sapho, Monna Vanna, Natoma, Katiusha (in Alfano's Resurezzione): sensual, giving women. Paradoxically, Garden was just as notable in trouser roles like Massenet's Cherubin; and even invented one, for Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame. Massenet wrote the part (that of a strolling player whose act brings a statue of the Madonna to life) for a tenor. Garden coopted it, with such success that, while Massenet was unhappy, he let it pass.
Melisande was Garden's greatest role, according to Garden, the one with which she most identified. Perhaps she preferred it because, of the roles Garden created, Melisande lived on: where are Natoma and Monna Vanna today? And in some ways Maeterlinck's doll princess relates closely to Garden, in her ascetic approach to life and in the sense of characterological mystery she created wherever she went. When Garden entered a room, people who knew very well who she was found themselves murmuring, "Who is she?" Yet she could be roguishly feminine on a whim or for a purpose. When tycoon Harold McCormick proposed Garden to take over the Chicago Open and his fellow board members demurred, Garden appeared before them to argue her case. "If I could just talk to each of you gentleman alone," she most provocatively said, "I am sure I could convince von." Thill Mary Garden took over the Chicago Opera.
She had one greater role even than Melisande, and she knew it: as manipulator of the press. Now, half a century after she retired, she is recalled as her colleagues are, for a stunt here and a great role there, for her Scotch burr, which she retained from her Aberdeen birthright through her American childhood and the otherwise flawless French of her maturity. She may be even less well recalled than, say, Marcella Sembrich or Lucrezia Bori, because they recorded well and plentifully while Garden never quite cottoned to the acoustic horn. But back when Garden was in her prime, she was one of the most famous singers in the world — precisely because of this talent for getting into the newspapers.
Garden must have been the first diva to realize that once you lure reporters into letting you become news, you will remain news thereafter. All you have to do is stay active and remain available for interviews. This Garden did, with a merry manner and an expertise in aiming conversations toward her objective, letting the newsmen wangle the next headline out of her so they could feel like the coauthors of her reputation. They liked that. For a woman who recommended abstaining— as Garden did often — she sure knew how to help a man to like himself.
No amount of news tales will support a reputation in opera without a talent behind those tales, and everyone who heard her agrees that Garden had that talent. She must have been something, for in real life she was tiny and thin, the kind of person who could get lost in a closet. Yet, on the stages of the biggest houses, she enthralled thousands at a go. Perhaps the saddest aspect of the recent arrival of home opera video is that they didn't start making it till the Malibrans, Lablaches, Chalyapins, Callases — and Mary Gardens — were all used up.
Two Melisandes
Claude Debussy assured Albert Carre, chief of the Opera-Comique, that Garden was the ideal choice for Melisande. The Comique's leading soprano, Marguerite Guirard, had her eye on the part as well — and, as Guirard was Carre's lover, he found himself in a dire position. He had no choice but to respect the composer's wishes, but his petite amie Guirard would not give up the role without a fight. On the day of the dress rehearsal, she bore down furiously on Garden.
"What are you doing here?" Guirard demands.
Garden, already dreaming herself into Melisande's trancelike grace, remains calm. "I came to rehearse Melisande."
Guirard then explodes in a hail of abuse and threats. But Garden thinks that this virago is the loved one of the chief of the house, and laughs to herself at the exquisite vanity of a foolish world.
"I'll show you who's mistress here!" Guirard vows.
"You win," says Garden.
A Feud a la Garden
At Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera, Garden enjoyed a sensation as Thai's with Maurice Renaud in 1907. It was New York's first taste of the piece, and French opera was in vogue, especially Massenet, especially Massenet with Mary Garden. Naturally, Garden was angered when Lina Cavalieri was unexpectedly announced to take over the part. No impresario would willingly pour off sell-out chemistry like Garden-asThai's for a substitution; there had to be an intrigue somewhere (an intrigue named Cavalieri, Garden was sure), and Garden determined to root it out or take the next boat back to France.
So she pulled out her magic press-magnetizing kit, made the mystic passes, and, presto! the papers carried the news that Mary Garden was sailing for France.
"I'm running this opera house!" he replied.
Hammerstein immediately capitulated, and Garden blithely resumed her sensation. But Cavalieri was furious. As The Most Beautiful Singer in the World, she had been planning to have her own sensation in the part, one that begins in a courtesan's diaphanous veils and ends in piety and prayer (not to mention death). Actually, someone might have warned Cavalieri that the sensation had more to do with Garden (and with Sibyl Sanderson, the original Thai's) than with the role itself. No matter; Cavalieri's scheme to steal Thai's from Garden had failed, and she responded with angry denunciations of her rival to the newspapers.
Of course the reporters went to Garden for her side of it, so in the end Cavalieri's plot had backfired: Garden not only retained Thai's, but took in a load of publicity as well. Still, no matter how much the boys prodded, Garden would tell them nothing of the Thai's caper. She spoke of new roles, new operas, new clothes, new vacation spots. She gave them enough to fill their Garden files for four or five stories — but, on the present matter, nothing. Indeed, our Mary could scarcely concentrate on the interview at all, it seemed, for most of her attention was taken up by an incredibly spoiled and demanding Pekingese lap dog, who would whine if it wasn't being petted every moment. »
At last the reporters called it quits. If they couldn't get the story, at least they had passed another arresting hour with the spectacular Mary Garden. Graciously, she saw them down the hall to the elevator, carrying the still insistently abominable little Pekingese.
As the men got into the elevator, one of them asked, "What's the dog's name, Miss Garden?"
"I call her Cavalieri," said Mary with a smile. "So long, gentlemen."
So they got their story after all.
Give a Girl a Break
Garden was delighted when John McCormack invited her to share a concert with him, as his public was known to be warm and appreciative, whereas hers was often merely curious, attracted by her publicity. When she thanked McCormack for the opportunity, he joked, "Well, Mary, you seldom get your name in the papers, so I thought I'd give you a boost."
