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Perhaps the only small-time artist who ever breaks even on a Manhattan recital is Philadelphia's Mrs. Florence Foster Jenkins, a clubwoman coloratura now in her 70s. Once a year Singer Jenkins appears on the flower-banked stage of one of Manhattan's smaller auditoriums, is always sure of a wildly enthusiastic audience, which comes to be amused. Accompanied by a concert pianist named Cosme Mc-Moon, she does her singing in a variety of flame-colored gowns, stomachers, mantillas, corsages, tiaras, while her yellow curls bob and nod with her vocal vim.
Critics have long wondered whether Coloratura Jenkins' art can be described as singing at all. But she will intrepidly attack any aria, scale its altitudes in great swoops and hoots, assay its descending trills with the vigor of a maudlin cuckoo. Her recitals are jampacked with cheering devotees. Her specialty: a flower song in which she massively hurls flowers, basket and all, at the heads of her following.