Identifier: grandoperasinger02lahe (find matches)
Title: The grand opera singers of to-day : an account of the leading operatic stars who have sung during recent years, together with a sketch of the chief operatic enterprises
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Lahee, Henry Charles, 1856-1953
Subjects: Singers Opera
Publisher: Boston : L. C. Page
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Opera Comique, al-though she occasionally appeared elsewhere,as for instance Brussels and London. She wascontent in Paris and made no effort to return toAmerica until Oscar Hammerstein found her,when she was willing to come, with the prestigeof an already notable career. Miss Gardens is a singular and penetratingpersonality on the stage. She invariably sug-gests her operatic character, sometimes withlarge and vivid illusion, but oftener with an ex-ceeding felicity and finesse. She can bear herpart as an accomplished operatic actress in theintricate and exotic ways of modern music-drama as Parisian composers and librettistswrite it — while her singing is less a pure artin itself than a means to a more suggestive andpoignant dramatic expression. She is accus-tomed to a theatre small in its audience room,where very close intimacy between singer andlistener is possible, and where every delicatesuggestion, and every stroke of finesse, may gohome, and where the charm or power of the per-
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Photograph by — matzene — Chicago MARY GARDEN AS SALOME The Manhattan Opera-House 181 sonality passes the footlights and penetratesthose beyond. Miss Garden seems inevitably to regard hersinging as primarily a suggestive and idealizedspeech. Her voice in itself is not remarkablefor compass, body, or quality. The connois-seurs may readily find flaws in the technicalartistry of her singing. Hers is not the voicefor the full-blooded coloratura of Violettasmusic. Eather the virtue of her singing is herability to shape and color the significant andhaunting phrase, to thread her way through anirridescent web of them, such as Debussysmusic for Melisande, and to give each a char-acteristic and persuasive shimmer and edge.In all her parts her singing abounds in subtle,shaded felicities. At moments her singing islike a new and strange speech — as new andstrange as Debussys music. The listener feelsthe captivating fascination and the penetratingsuggestion, and leaves the tests of cold tech

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