Mary the First

"What a triumph! I have never seen such enthuiasm as I did that night when I finished. There were curtain calls and curtain calls, and they all shouted and threw their programs and little roses and handkerchiefs on the stage. Because, you see, they didn't know who in the world I was."

She was Mary Garden, and as debuts go, her magical performance at Paris' Opera Comique that night might have been staged by her fairy godmother. The year was 1900, and Mary, Scotland-born and Chicago-reared, was an impoverished young soprano who haunted rehearsals at the Comique. Her moment came when, during a performance of Gustave Charpentier's Louise, the lead soprano suddenly collapsed after the second act. Panic-stricken, the director asked Mary if she could fill in. Though she had never sung on a stage before, much less with an orchestra, she pluckily replied: "Have no fear. I shall not fail." She hastily pinned her 98 lbs. into a costume several sizes too large and boldly stepped onstage. She caused such a sensation in the role that she subsequently sold out 100 performances.

Mary Garden went on to become one of the most celebrated divas of all time, bringing to the stage a radiance and mystery that, as one critic wrote, "made young men dream and old men think of adventures they never had." Her career spanned three decades, and when she died last week of pneumonia at 92, there were none who could dispute her proud litany: "I began at the top. I stayed at the top. I left at the top."

Poignant & Personal. How she stayed there was one of the wonders of the woman, for critics were forever carping about her curiously husky and often uneven voice. Her reaction was characteristic: "Nobody ever said I could sing, and I don't give a damn." Her contribution to opera, little realized by the critics who were bred on the stodgy, grandiose style of the full-blown sopranos popular at the turn of the century, was enormous. She was the first of the great singing actresses, a complete performer capable of re-creating opera heroines in her own poignant, personal image. She used her voice as a painter uses a brush, coloring each role with its own distinct intonation. Her Thais was brazen and worldly, her Melisande pale and groping, her Louise earthy and free-loving.

Following her success abroad, Mary Garden returned to the U.S. in 1907, and eventually implanted herself as the prima donna of the Chicago Grand Opera Co. Her reign was absolute, and in 1921, when she was appointed director of the company, the local newspapers happily crowned her "Mary the First." But, single-minded hellion that she often was, her shakeup of the existing order resulted in several squabbles with other singers, two lawsuits, a loss of $1,000,000 and an assassination threat. After one season, she decided that "my place is with the artists, not over them."

Age & Discretion. Meanwhile, with a canny eye cocked on the box office, she carefully nurtured a public image that equated her offstage life with the scarlet ladies she portrayed. At various times, she gulled newspapers into gossiping about "affairs" with any notable that came to her mind: Gene Tunney, William S. Hart, Al Smith and the Prince of Wales. (If in fact she had any famous lovers, nobody ever discovered who they were.) When Billy Sunday preached against her sensuous dance of the seven veils in Salome, she went to see him and quickly won his friendship over an ice cream soda. Andrew Carnegie pledged his admiration but allowed that he would not go to hear her in Louise because he did not believe in free love; Faust was more his speed, he said.

Always the modern woman, she created a sensation when she appeared at a dinner party in a daringly low-cut gown; when Socialite Chauncey Depew asked her what was holding it up, she cooed, "Your age and my discretion." Outfitted in the latest fashions and draped with $500,000 worth of jewelry ("gifts from my admirers"), she cut a figure of elegance and sauciness on her cross-country tours in a private Pullman. The press trailed her everywhere, reported her forays into the Monte Carlo casinos, her nude swims in the Mediterranean, her dietetic secrets (one meal a day, fortified with a pre-bed glass of milk mixed with ten drops of iodine). Roads, perfumes, sundaes were named after her, and if a suitor was lacking, she was not above dredging up a photograph of some deceased Hindu prince and releasing it to the press as her latest marital prospect.

Stop & Start. But it was all show: marriage was not for Mary Garden. On one occasion, when a wealthy suitor proposed to her, she stationed him in the wings so that he could hear the cheers and applause following her performance. "When you can find a man who can do that for me," she said, "then I'll marry him." But no man ever did. In 1931, while sitting onstage during a performance of Jongleur de Notre-Dame in Chicago, she decided that "I have given enough," went to her dressing room after the last curtain call, put on her coat and never returned. She was 57.

She retired to Aberdeen, her birthplace, and after giving away her piano and her collection of scores, never sang again, "not even to myself." She spent her last years as a kind of talent scout, holding auditions in her studio, admonishing young hopefuls to "stop studying and start singing." Though she helped the careers of dozens of singers, including Soprano Grace Moore, she sadly remarked a few years ago that she "had not found another Mary Garden." Nor has anyone else.

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