| Mary Garden | |
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| Background information | |
| Born | February 20, 1874 |
| Origin | Aberdeen, Scotland |
| Died | January 3 1967 (aged 92) Inverurie, Scotland |
| Genre(s) | Opera |
| Occupation(s) | Singer |
| Voice type(s) | Soprano |
| Years active | 1900–1931 |
| Label(s) | G & T, Columbia, and Victor |
Mary Garden (born Aberdeen, February 20, 1874 - died Inverurie, January 3, 1967) was an important Scottish soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century. She was described as "the Sarah Bernhardt of opera".
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Early life and rise to stardom
Mary Garden was born in Scotland. Her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, USA when she was nine years old. She showed promise as a young singer, and after training with the best in Chicago was sent to Paris to receive further instruction there. She made her public debut in April of 1900, in the title role of Gustave Charpentier's Louise at the Opéra-Comique, a part with which she was closely identified. Two years later, Claude Debussy selected her to play the female lead at the Opéra-Comique debut of his Pelléas et Mélisande. Garden's performances met with considerable critical acclaim. She also created a sensation as Salomé in the French version of Richard Strauss's opera of that name.
Mary Garden first performed in the USA at the Manhattan Opera House in 1907 in the title role in Thaïs. She starred at the Chicago Civic Opera from 1910 through 1931, the year in which she retired from the operatic stage. She stayed active giving recitals, lectures, and master classes for another 2 decades.
Personal life
As portrayed in both her autobiography and that of Michael Turnbull (see below), Garden was an archetypal diva who knew exactly how to get her own way. She had a number of feuds with various musical colleagues from which she invariably emerged victorious, eventually ending up in control of the Chicago Opera. A relentless self-publicist, her flamboyant personal life was often the subject of more attention than her public performances, and her affairs with men, real or imagined, were liable to emerge as scandalous rumours in the newspapers. Her autobiography, Mary Garden's Story (1951), is marred by inaccuracies. Always prone to embellish and exaggerate, Garden was already succumbing to dementia when the manuscript was being prepared. Mary Garden died in Inverurie, close to Aberdeen, where she spent the last 30 years of her life. There is a small memorial garden dedicated to her in the west-end of Aberdeen, with a small inscriptioned stone and a bench.
Recordings and films
Mary Garden made a number of gramophone records between 1903 and 1929, for G & T, Columbia, and Victor. Her recordings continue to be reissued and are of interest to historic opera lovers, although Garden herself was said to have been generally disappointed with the results of her work in the recording studio. Of special interest are recordings she made with the piano played by composer Claude Debussy. She made two silent films, Thais (1917) and a World War I romance entitled The Splendid Sinner (1918). Without her singing voice, her acting was criticized and neither film was a success.
Sources
- Fletcher, J B: Garden, Mary in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) ISBN 0-333-73432-7
- Garden, M and Biancolli, L: Mary Garden's Story (New York, 1951)
- Turnbull, Michael TRB: Mary Garden (Portland, Oregon, 1997)
External links
- Mary Garden, Scottish-American Soprano with many photos
- Mary Garden on Jules-Massenet.com short biography with unusual photo
- Mary Garden Recordings Pearl label CD reissue with audio samples in Windows Media format
