(3 of 4)
and was put on a
salary of $50 a month. Impresario Oscar Hammerstein (high silk hat,
spade beard, big black cigar) played Mary Garden's U. S. debut as his
trump card in his operatic feud with Manhattan's Metropolitan
(1906-10). Then the talk began. She wore the scantiest of costumes in
Thais (she still wears as little as possible under any stage costume),
danced lasciviously with the seven veils of Salome. Critics assailed
her singing. They were used to the stodgy, conventional ways of
big-fronted sopranos. Garden, they admitted, was pleasing to the eye,
knew how to move about the stage, had a certain dramatic gift. Few
realized then her great contribution to operatic art: that every part
she played was recreated, made poignant, personal—her brazen, worldly
Thai's (a role she hates); her piteous, questioning little juggler (Le
Jongleur de Notre Dame}; her bourgeois, free-loving Louise; her
pale, groping Melisande. Significant is the fact that singers with
smoother voices have since had small success with any of her great
roles. In 1910 she went to Chicago, added other roles, notably Flora in
L'Amore dei Tre Re, Katiusha in Alfano's Resurrection. One year
(1920-21) she was director as well as leading soprano of the Chicago
company, came through unscathed despite tall trouble with the tenors.
Three months in Chicago, a tour with the company, a few concerts and a
long vacation on the Riviera—so does Mary Garden divide her time. In
Chicago she lives on the top floor of the Lake Shore Drive Hotel, works
hard, keeps fit, reads widely, plays occasional bridge. She goes out
little socially because she refuses to be bored, hates above all things
to sit around a table and eat. Forty times she has crossed the
Atlantic, has never seen the dining saloon of a ship. On the Riviera
she visits with her family, her mother who goes from Manhattan, one
sister from Scotland, another from Switzerland, another from Monte
Carlo. She plays tennis, tries her luck in the casinos, swims naked in
the Mediterranean. She is 53 and does not care who knows it. She has
developed a philosophy unusual for prima donnas. Criticism does not
disturb her. At a luncheon in Chicago last year she said: "Nobody ever
said yet I could sing and I don't give a damn." Yet her characters are
as carefully molded as ever, her engagements as conscientiously kept.
Between her and her manager Charles L. Wagner there exists no written
contract.
With the public Mary Garden has preserved her drawing power. With the
newspapers she is as good copy as she was 20 years ago. Like Henry
Ford, Albert Einstein and Charles Augustus Lindbergh her most casual
utterances are syndicated: She will marry a Turkish pasha. She will not
marry at all. She will have a film test and perhaps do Pelleas et
Melisande for the movies. She will retire in another two years to the
He de Rouge off Corsica, ride mules. . . .
Her keen, independent opinions on matters artistic would make good
reading if she ever takes time to write them. "Mechanical repetition
is what kills art in the U. S. If a play succeeds, an actor is asked to
repeat the performance 300 nights running. No artist can survive such
a system.
