Mary Garden

Mary Garden (20 February 1874 - 3 January 1967), was a Scottish-American operatic soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century. She 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.

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.

In 1907 lured by Oscar Hammerstein, Mary, now aged 33, returned to America to join New York’s Manhattan Opera House, where she became an international success. There, Mary stunned audiences with her audacious interpretation of Strauss’s Salome, when her appearance in a near-invisible pink body-stocking drew as many gasps as her spectacular voice. By 1910 she was a household name in America, performing with the Boston and Philadelphia Opera Companies and in 1921 she became director of the Chicago Opera Association. Her international standing was recognised when she appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1930. Although she spent much of her life in France and America, Mary returned to settle in her childhood city of Aberdeen after she retired, living there for the last 30 years of her life.