Queer Places:
35 Charlotte St, Aberdeen AB25, UK
Saint Nicholas Churchyard
Aberdeen, Aberdeen City, Scotland
Mary
Garden (20 February 1874 – 3 January 1967) was a Scottish
operatic soprano
with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th
century. She was censored for her performance of Salome, “which,”
Emma Goldman observed, “the moral busybodies had declared indecent;” she admired Goldman’s “stand for freedom”.
Women also played integral roles in forging this modern fairyland. Those of
influence cultivated a queer elite, often artistic, culture in Miami. This
included recruiting opera divas of international acclaim with great queer
followings, such as Amelita
Galli-Curci and Mary Garden, to perform in the city.
Alden Freeman personally hosted these
women. In part to inaugurate and celebrate the opening of Casa Casuarina, in
February 1931 Freeman hosted Garden for a concert in Miami. Garden, who never
married, had earned a reputation for her sexual ambiguity and gender-bending
characters and became a lesbian icon. For instance, she created the lesbian
role of Chrysis in Camille Erlanger’s 1906 opera Aphrodite. In 1913, a
nineteen-year-old girl in Philadelphia committed suicide because of her
uncontrollable—and unrequited—infatuation with the opera singer, whom she had
never met. “The young girl had become imbued with the idea that Mary Garden
was Queen Cleopatra, and that she was her slave,” noted one report. It appears
Garden’s queer aura also resonated with men like Freeman.
Garden spent the latter part of her childhood and youth in the United
States and eventually became an American citizen, although she lived in France
for many years and eventually retired to Scotland, where she died.[1]
In the twentieth century opera became a significant force in lesbian
subculture. Leading singers such as Mary Garden,
Emma Calve,
Geraldine Farrar,
and Kathleen Ferrier became cultural icons to lesbian opera fans.
The American lesbian novelist Willa Cather, a devotee of opera,
wrote The Song of the Lark (19IS), a fictionalized biography of the Wagnerian
soprano Olive Fremstad.
Described as "the
Sarah Bernhardt of opera", Garden was an exceptional actress as well as a
talented singer. She was particularly admired for her nuanced performances
which employed interesting uses of vocal color. Possessing a beautiful
lyric voice that had a wide
vocal
range and considerable amount of flexibility, Garden first arose to
success in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century. She became the
leading soprano at the
Opéra-Comique; notably portraying roles in several world premieres,
including Mélisande in
Claude Debussy's
Pelléas et Mélisande (1902). She worked closely with
Jules Massenet, in whose operas she excelled. Massenet notably wrote the
title role in his opera
Chérubin
(1905) for her.[2]
In 1907,
Oscar Hammerstein convinced 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.
Additionally, Garden appeared in two
silent
films made by
Samuel Goldwyn.[3]
After retiring from the opera stage in 1934, Garden worked as a talent
scout for
MGM. She also gave lectures and recitals, mostly on the life and works of
Claude Debussy, until 1949. She retired to Scotland and in 1951 published a
successful autobiography, Mary Garden's Story.
Her voice is preserved on a number of recordings made for the
Gramophone Company (including some with Debussy at the piano),
Edison Records,
Pathé,
Columbia Records and the
Victor Talking Machine Company between 1903 and 1929.[4]
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