Mary Garden as Salome
In 1907, Oscar Hammerstein convinced Mary Garden to join the Manhattan Opera House in New York where she became an immediate success. By 1910 she was a household name in America and Garden appeared in operas in several major American cities; including performing with the Boston Opera Company and the Philadelphia Opera Company. Between 1910 and 1932 Garden worked in several opera houses in Chicago. She first worked with the Chicago Grand Opera Company (1910–1913) and then joined the Chicago Opera Association in 1915, ultimately becoming the company’s director in 1921. Although director for only one year, Garden was notably responsible for staging the world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges before the company went bankrupt in 1922. Shortly thereafter she became the director of the Chicago Civic Opera where she commissioned the opera Camille by 28-year-old composer Hamilton Forrest. She sang roles at the Civic Opera until 1931, notably in several United States and world premieres.
Mary Garden is a member of the Scottish American Hall of Fame located in North Riverside, Illinois.
Chicago Examiner, November 15, 1908
MARY GARDEN, the American prima donna most honored in Europe for her interpretations on the grand opera stage of the masterpieces of modern authors and composers, has added a notable contribution to the controversy respecting “Salome.”
For the millions of readers reached by this newspaper Miss Garden sets forth, on this page an artist’s view of a work of art exhibited as a whole, in contrast with the seizing of a sensational detail as an excuse for easy profit from an immodest and sacrilegious display in public which otherwise would be prohibited,
After several months’ deluge of dancing Salomes, and voluminous discussions of them, the ideas of tha actress-prima donna whom Oscar Hammerstein intrusts with the task of presenting to patrons of the Manhattan Opera House a complete view of that character according to the Oscar Wilde conception, cannot fail to interest.
Mary Garden’s place among prima donnas is unique, owing to her exceptional gifts as an actress as well as a singer. These gifts have made her pre-eminent in such roles as the heroines of Cbarpentier’s opera, Louise; in the Pelléas et Mélisande of Debussy; in Thais,Aphrodite and Manon.
Also, early in the season, she will create the title role m the new French Opera, “Le Jongleur de Notre Dame,” who is a youth m the graceful costume of the legendary attendant of the troubadour of the “Moyea-Age”— based on the medieval tale of Anatole France.
In this sympathetic boy character, and in that of Salome, Miss Garden expects to produce her strong impressions of the season upon New York audiences.
Chicago Tribune, November 6, 1910
Mary Garden sang again in Chicago yesterday. After an interval of ten years. in which the little west side singer rose from obscurity to the heights of operatic fame and fortune, some who had known her in the other days listened to her rendition of the tragic cadences of Mélisande yesterday afternoon.
It had been a big change. The girl who used to sing old sentimental songs at impromptu performances in the old Haymarket and the Columbia returned to the Auditorium one of the first stars of the opera company. It’s a real romance—that story.
Mary Garden was born in Scotland, but when she was a child her parents came to America and settled in Brooklyn. Then, later, they went to Massachusetts. But before Mary was 14 they came to Chicago, where the father held a position with a bicycle manufacturer. By the time she came west Mary had shown some talent as a singer. Gifted with a sweet, clear voice, she began singing for the love of the songs.
This display of talent pleased the Garden family. A man in good circumstances, her father wished to give her the advantage of a competent teacher. The family wish, however, was that she should study the violin. But while the future prima donna learned to play the violin well, she naturally preferred singing.
Not long after coming to Chicago she became a pupil of Mrs. Sarah Robinson Duff, who became a somewhat celebrated instructor in voice culture and who had remarkable success with her pupils. Mrs. Duff in later years went to Paris, where she is now teaching other young women who are hoping to follow in the footsteps of her most celebrated graduate.
Pride of Her First Teacher.
At that time Mary Garden was scarcely out of short dresses, but already she gave promise of being a charmingly pretty girl. Graceful, slight, and with light, waving hair, she won the love of Mrs. Duff, who showed unusual care in training her voice.
With Mary Garden in Mrs. Duff’s class were Grace Van Studdiford, Marcia Van Dresser, and Fanchon Thompson, all of whom became celebrated on the light opera stage. Miss Thompson, however, withdrew from the stage later, marrying a wealthy Cuban planter. Mrs. Duff was the companion, as well as the teacher, of her “girls.” She frequently went with them to the theaters and she took delight in having them sing at small concerts.
At that time the Columbia theater, which burned in 1900, stood in Monroe street, just west of Dearborn. The manager was William J. Davis Sr., now manager of the Illinois Theater. There the Bostonians and the McCal Opera company sang. Mr. Davis, who has shown a fatherly interest in many young men and women who have succeeded on the stage and in opera, became quite a warm friend of Mrs. Duffs brilliant quartet of girls.
Often when they would come to the Columbia theater to attend a performance or to the Haymarket theater, which he also managed, he would arrange an impromptu concert after the play or opera. The accompanist for these little concerts generally was Mrs. Nellie Skelton of Chicago, who has the reputation of being an unusually fine pianist and skilled accompanist. Mrs. Skelton would play the piano while the girls sang. Their repertoire was naturally a sort of musical club sandwich. Between two classic numbers they would sing a Lit of ragtime or old fashioned melody that made these occasions informal and delightful.
Old Fashioned Songs Her Favorites.
Mary Garden, particularly, liked the old fashioned songs. A Scotch girl, the love of the songs that touch the heart and bring mist to dry eyes was a part of her love of music. Unconsciously almost she became most proficient in the singing of old time melodies, and her natural talent as’ an actress first became apparent in her rendition of these songs.
One night there was a concert that followed a dinner at the Union League club, Miss Garden there was urged by Mr. Davis to sing one of her best numbers. Though a bit timid, the future, Thais and Salome, then hardly more than of schoolgirl age, stepped forward and began singing “My Old Dutch.” The tenderness, feeling, and pathos young Miss Garden put into the rendition of the song affected all who heard her. Mr. Davis said:
- I had heard her sing many times, but never had I seen her get so much out of a song. Her girlish beauty and the sweetness of her voice made a deep impression on all present. I know there were tears in my eyes.
‘Mary,’ I said, ‘you have got a great future in vaudeville. If you’ll just put on a coster suit and sing like that you will win audiences right from the start!
I gave this advice, for vaudeville then was just coining into great vogue and I believed her future was in it. Of course, none of her friends, myself included, dreamed that she was destined for a wonderful career in opera.
Mr Davis is one of Miss Garden’s friends and is sure that she has changed but little since she left Chicago to continue her studies in France. He said, “She was always gentle, modest, and sweet, while showing the reporter a girlish, picture of Miss Garden that had been given him just ten years ago. “There was no suggestion of forwardness about her, despite her magnetic personality. Mildness and gentleness were a part of her nature and I cannot think of her having any other disposition. It would be impossible, despite her triurrphs. I never knew a young girl that I liked better nor one whose success gave me more pleasure. I have known some talented and splendid young singers, but none with a sweeter, more lovable nature than Mary Garden.”
Debussy himself has called Miss Garden “the unforgettable Mélisande” and paid a high tribute to her singing and her impersonation of the unfortunate sweetheart of Pelléas.
Edmond Warnery, the tenor, was heard as Pelléas, and Hector Dufranne, the baritone, was the Golaud. Clotilde Bressler-Gianeli, the contralto, appeared as Genevieve, mother of Pelléas and Golaud. Suzanne Dumesnil, from the Opera Comique. in Paris, had the part of little Yniold. The king of Arkel was Gustave Huberdeau, and Armand Crabbe was the doctor.
The first performance of Pelléas and Mélisande took place at the Opera Comique in Paris in 1902. So deep was the impression made by the music of Claude Debussy, as well as the lines of Maeterlinck, that Debussy found himself the representative of a new school of composition which has gained thousands of adherents among opera patrons.
Outline of “Pelléas and Mélisande”
The text is Maeterlinck’s beautiful love story. In outline it runs thus: There was once an old king of Allemonde, named Arkel. In his grim castle, situated on a wild, rocky coast, and partly surrounded by dense forests, there lived with him his daughter Genevieve, her second husband, and her son Pelléas; also her son by a former husband. Golaud, and his little son Yniold. Golaud’s wife had died and his grandfather, for political reasons, had arranged a marriage for him with a princess of an adjoining country named Ursula. One day Golaud, who was a mighty hunter, left the castle where his stepfather lay dangerously ill and started off on a boar hunting expedition.
He loses his way in a forest, and emerging from the thick trees and undergrowth on to an open space, he sees a beautiful maiden dressed like a princess, sitting by the side of a pool and weeping. She is timid and frightened and begs him not to touch her. She tells him she comes from a far distant land; that she has run away, and that a crown some one had given her has fallen into the water. She forbids him to reek for it. and warns him if he does she will throw herself into the pool. Finally, though she thinks him old and rough and gray haired, he perswdes her to come away with him.
Six months later Pelléas receives a letter from Golaud telling him of his marriage with the little, unknown Mélisande and of her beauty, and begging him ere he returns home to intercede on his behalf with his grandfather. Pelleas gives the letter to his mother, and she breaks the news to the old king, who wisely accepts the inevitable.
Mélisande Left to Own Devices.
Golaud brings Mélisande home to the solitary, gloomy cattle, where, in his absence on hunting expeditions, she whiles away the time playing with her little stepson and discovering the old time meanings of affinity and love. With gay insouciance Pelléas and Mélisande are ever roaming together in the sunniest parts of Arkel’s ancient domain. But the green flame of jealousy in Golaud’s eyes dispels their golden dreams, and slowly and relentlessly the gyves of Fate wind around them.
One beautiful moonlit night the morose and angry husband surprises the lovers by an old well celebrated for its curative powers of blindness; he menaces Mélisande and stabs Pelléas to death. That night to the stunned and frightened Mélisande a child is born, and her life is in dire peril. While it is trembling in the balance, Golaud. maddened by the desire of ascertaining if her lover was innocent or guilty, plies the dying girl with brutal questions; the agitation is too severe for the weakened system; Mélisande loses her frail hold on life and dies.
Recently In the park of the ancient Abbe Saint Wandrille, France, the home of Maurice Maeterlinck, author of the drama, an out of door performance of the tragedy was given. Georgette Le Blanc or Mme. Maeterlinck took the rale of Mélisande. Only about fifty persons, who paid about $40 each to see the performance were present and stood under canvases set at various points in the garden while the players proceeded with the performance in a drizzle. Artistically, the thing was a genuine success, but comfortably it was not so charming. The accompanying scenes were taken at the time..
Chicago Examiner, November 13, 1910
Mary Garden was mistaken for an ordinary person yesterday and she never was so mad in all her life. The prima donna of the dynamic intellect actually was asked to take off her hat in a theater. More than that, she was given the alternative of leaving the playhouse before she had seen Fritzi Scheff half through The Mikado. And she took it.
The tragedy occurred at the Lyric matinee. Miss Garden had as her guests in a box three old Chicago friends— Mrs. O. W. Mitchell, Mrs. L. E. Estey and Miss Edith Mitchell. The diva wore an expansive hat of distinctive and wonderful construction and she kept right on wearing it after the curtain went up.
In an intermission an usher, who did not know Miss Garden, tiptoed into the box and whispered: “Madame, will you please remove your hat?”
“I certainly shall not,” snapped the famous singer.
“Strict Rule of the House.”
“It is a strict rule of the house,” ventured the usher, one of the dainty brunette Shubert maids.
“I don’t care if it is.” answered Miss Garden. “This is a lower rear box and my hat couldn’t possibly be in anyone’s way.’
The usher retreated toward the manager’s office. Soon she returned with the ultimatum:
“I’m sorry, but you must remove your hat or leave the theater.”
“Thanks, I shall leave the theater,” said Miss Garden. Her friends were equally indignant and the four marched out, with heads held high aud eyes flashing.
Miss Garden was still a furious woman when found in her apartment at the Blackstone, in the evening. She was serving tea to her three friends.
She Paid $15 for the Box.
Never did she put more dramatic spirit into a grand opera scene than she did when she arose from her chair, brandishing a silver table knife. Her famous eyes glistened. Her famous lips quivered. The knife itself took on an added gleam that would have made the scullion who polished it famous if the steward could have seen lt. My, but Mary was mad.
“I’d just as soon not have any of the La Tosca stuff,” gasped the caller offrightedly, backing away from the ferocious picture.
“Well, that’s the way I feel,” exclaimed Miss Garden. “In all my life I never was treated so inconsiderately, so shamefully, with such gross indignity. Of course I wouldn’t take off my hat. Why should I? I paid fifteen real dollars for that box and I proposed to do as I pleased in lt. That’s what people sit in boxes for.
Wouldn’t Take Off Hat for King.
“And I wore the hat because I wanted people to see it. I admit it was a big hat, but it was in nobody’s way. That was the best hat I have, one I recently got from Paris. There’s nothing like it in Chicago, or anywhere else for that matter.
“I think it would be well for some persons to find out whom they are talking to befose they do things like they did to me over there at the Lyric this afternoon. Take off my hat. My hat? Why, the idea! I wouldn’t take off my hat for the King of England himself unless I just felt like it.
“The next time I go to the theater I’ll call up the box office and ask:
‘Please, mister, may I wear my new hat?’ before I invest in tickets.”
That wasn’t all Miss Garden said, for even celebrated prima donnas are just plain women in some respects. And Mary was, oh! so angry.
Chicago Tribune, November 12, 1921
Radio-telephony extended the scope of of the Chicago Grand Opera company 1,500 miles north, east, south, and west yesterday.
Mary Garden, Edith Mason, and Conductor Giorgio Polacco played to the biggest house of their careers—more than 50,000 persons scattered from New York state to Kansas and from southern Kentucky to northern Minnesota—via wireless.
And, shortly after the beginning of the test, radio messages returned from the four points of the compass to the roof of the Commonwealth Edison company—the point of actual wireless transmission from Chicago—reporting “QSA,” which means to the radio wise, “Signals clear and loud.”
How the Trick Was Turned.
The demonstration yesterday was preparatory to inauguration of a season of grand opera by wireless beginning next Monday with the opening of the Chicago opera season.
The test was made under actual opera conditions and consisted of an opening address by General Director Mary Garden, an orchestra selection by Giorgio Polacco, and Miss Mason’s rendition of an aria from Madame Butterfly.
High up in the wings above the Auditorium stage a small instrument caught the music and carried it by wire to the roof of the Commonwealth Edison company, where it was dispatched by radio to the widespread audience.
For days the notice of the test had been going out over the wireless to the radio operators, and when the announcement, “This is station K. Y. W., Chicago,” was sent, all were “listening in.”
In The Tribune plant a score or more heard “Our Mary” present the Chicago Opera company to the world.
Tap Opera by Radio.
No longer will it be necessary to dress up in evening togs to hear grand opera and no longer will grand opera consist solely of phonographic selections in towns 500 or 1,000 miles from Chicago.
All that is necessary is to acquire a radio telephone outfit, tune it to the required wavelength of 360 meters, and then enjoy grand opera just as it was sung and at the moment it is sung in Chicago for the appliance will hang above the Auditorium stage through the season.
Chicago Tribune January 5, 1967
By Claudia Cassidy
Mary Garden, one of the unique originals whose forte happened to be grand opera, died yesterday at a nursing home in Aberdeen, Scotland. She would have been 90 Feb. 20.
Miss Garden was a world figure from that Paris night in 1900 when she replaced the star of Charpentier’s Louise at the Opera Comique just in time to sing its poignant aria, “Depuis le jour.” Claude Debussy wrote Pelléas et Mélisande for her, and battled Maurice Maeterlinck until the mere author of the book relinquished his dream to have his wife create the role. The Scottish girl who weighed 98 pounds and had fathomless courage strode right out and pinned the world on her bonnet.
- Mary Garden in Pelléas et Mélisande
Yet she was Chicago’s particular pride. Not just that she had been brought here as a child, or had here begun to study. Rather that when New York’s Metropolitan Opera vanquished Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera, the Manhattan’s adventurous repertory came to the Auditorium to launch Chicago’s resident opera, long high in the most splendid the world had to offer. That Auditorium season opened with Aida, but Mary Garden was up to her old tricks. She waited two nights and stole it.
It was Nov. 5, 1910, when Garden stepped on the Auditorium stage to sing Pelléas et Mélisande, and it was Jan. 24, 1931, when she sang her Chicago farewell at the Civic Opera House in Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. In between lay some of the most radiant night’s music drama has ever known, nights of the Garden Thais, Mélisande, Salome, Louise, Judith, Sapho, Carmen, Fiora and a dozen more, none of them more memorable than her boy juggler who performs his tricks for the Virgin.
It is not surprising that in 1921-22 Chicago opera made Miss Garden its managing director—she called herself “directa.” She turned out a scintillating season to the tune of more than a million dollar deficit, which was serious money in those days. Even so, the story was that when Harold McCormick, for years president of our most luxurious opera, wrote a check for a large chunk of it, he said it was a pleasure.
Two of the renowned stars of that special Garden season were particularly saddened to hear of her death. Edith Mason, now Mrs. William E. Ragland, said:
- She was one of the greatest artists that ever lived. Nobody could touch her Thais or her Melisande. She was a great woman.
Claire Dux, now Mrs. Hans von der Marwitz, who was brought here from Europe by Garden, said:
- Mary Garden was the greatest operatic personality of our age.
It is doubtful that anyone who knew her work would challenge either tribute. There were always people who swore that Garden could not sing. James Gibbons Huneker, too shrewd for that trap, called her voice “a serious mirage.” When she sang a role she put her imprint on it forever, and those who listened bewitched were never quite the same again. Only last summer when Pelléas et Mélisande was being widely revived in Europe, people who never heard her kept asking if her Melisande had not been stiff and cold. The truth was that she could make you shiver in the chill, strange land where mysterious Melisande shivered and died.
Garden had a genius for publicity to get people in the house, but it was a genius for music drama that kept them there once they came. In that first Chicago season she followed Melisande with Louise and Thais—and then came Salome. It blew the roof off. The Chicago Law and Order League fulminated, the chjief of police said Garden “wallowed around like a cat in a bed of catnip,” and after two performnances Salome disappeared until its star became “directa” and brought it back.
- Left to right: Mary Garden as “Floria Tosca” from The Chicago Examiner, November 25, 1913; Time Magazine, December 15, 1930; Mary Garden as Melisandes, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr. photographer
A genius for publicity, no doubt. But of another kind of gernius, here is what Percy Hammond wrote in The Tribune of Mary Garden’s Salome:
- She is a fabulous she-thing playing with love and death—loathsome, mysterious, poisonous, slaking her slimy passion in the blood of her victim…She is Salome according to the Wilde formulary—a monstrous oracle of beauty.
The first time Garden came to town she wore a special Paris skirt and rumors of being about to marry a Turkish pasha. She was a femme fatale at least in the headlines. As long ago as 1911 she was threatening to “write a book and roast the critics.” She was always being rescued from drowning, making outrageous remarks ideal for headlines, and engaging in verbal battle those who enjoyed it. Typical was her remark that “Oscar Hammerstein treats me worse than a chorus girl,” and his rejoinder, “Miss Garden owes me $5,000. No chorus girl ever did that.”
The lyric stage was her home, and one of the last new works she gave Chicago was the Hamilton Forrest Camille, a failure whose title would have horrified Sarah Bernhardt, who never could understand how Americans could make Camille out of La Dame aux Camelias. But Garden and Bernhardt were in many ways two of an exotic kind. The legend about them outdistanced the reality, and that took a gifted pair of seven league boots.
Garden sometimes sang recitals, bracelets jingling, long chiffon handkerchief floating, her special “Beau Soir” and “Green” flashing in the air like the conjurations they were. After retirement, she sometimes gave lectures, but they lacked her true magic, which was for the lyric stage.
At the end, when she was in the nursing home in Aberdeen, the story was that she often entertained the old ladies of her life in and out of opera, putting on little shows. She must have been Our Mary to them, too.
- 1911 Columbia Print Ad.
Mary Garden “At Parting” (Victor Talking Machine Company of Canada Label) and “At Dawn” (American Victor Talking Machine Co. Label)
1926
Century Magazine, 1910
Ladies’ Home Journal, December, 1917
Country Life Magazine, January, 1928
In 1911, Impresario Guy Golterman brought Mary Garden to the St Louis Coliseum as Salome. A sell-out-of course. Might have been her only St Louis appearance. I have a letter back to GG from
Aberdeen, a very kind reply that Ms Garden was failing. Guy gave stblouis the golden age from 1910 on at the Coliseum MUNY and Kiel.