Chapter Four
Mademoiselle Lawrence

Despite the Great Depression (which took a little longer to reach France than it did other major industrialised countries), Paris could justifiably claim to be the artistic hub of the world in the late 1920s and early 1930s—a magnet for painters, writers and, to a lesser extent, musicians from around the globe.

If Marjorie had wandered down Rue de la Boétie, a couple of kilometres from Avenue Trudaine, there was a good chance she might have spotted Pablo Picasso coming or going from his studio, or Salvador Dali exhibiting himself in any of the hundreds of fashionable cafés around the city. If she had been so inclined, she might have shaken hands with Henry Miller, T.S. Elliot, Colette, F. Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce (whom she did eventually meet) at Sylvia Beach’s ‘Shakespeare and Company’ bookshop on the Left Bank.

In the frenetic years following the end of the First World War, style had replaced substance and hedonism had replaced heroism in ‘The City of Light’. Haute couture was being reinvented by Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli and the houses of Guerlain and Coty were doing the same for parfum. At the Folies-Bergère Josephine Baker could be seen shaking her derriere, while the Penobscot Indian, Molly Spotted Elk, performed her controversial tribal dance at Bricktop’s cabaret ‘up the hill’ on Montmartre.

Musical activity was only slightly less spectacular. If they were in town, Louis Armstrong or Django Reinhart might have been encountered doing a ‘turn’ at one of the city’s famous nightspots. Stravinsky was quietly producing a string of masterpieces in his apartment in Rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré; Ravel, though he lived in the country, popped up to town frequently, while the group of composers calling themselves Les Six were active, and would-be composers were flocking to the composition classes of Nadia Boulanger, described by Ned Rorem as the most influential teacher since Socrates.

The greatest singers of the time visited Paris and sang as guests at the Opéra and in the city’s historic concert halls, but if foreign singers found ready acceptance in Paris, French singers of this period found less of a welcome when they ventured abroad. It was not that the great French singers of the day (Ninon Vallin, Germaine Lubin, Georges Thill etc.) were not first-class artists with fine voices; it was rather a matter of taste, their ‘Gallic’ style of singing finding less acceptance outside France than the more torrid and lachrymose outpourings of their counterparts from south of the Alps.1

It might be said that Marjorie qualified for inclusion in the Paris musical fraternity from the moment she began lessons with Cécile Gilly, albeit at the lowest level. Being a pupil of Madame Gilly carried status, for among connoisseurs of singing in Paris, Cécile Gilly was legendary. Marjorie had her first lesson with Madame two days after she moved in with the Grodets and thereafter four times a week. Gilly proved to be an exacting and demanding teacher, which Marjorie could cope with, but she was also cold and unfriendly towards her new pupil. Easygoing and affable Marjorie found this difficult to cope with and she left Rue de la Rochefoucauld in tears many times during the first months. Marjorie had little choice but to persevere and it was well she did, because Cécile Gilly proved to be the ideal teacher for the present state of Marjorie’s voice, her current level of accomplishment and her aspirations to be a dramatic soprano.

As maîtresse and pupille came to know one another better, their relationship improved. Like the elder Grodets, Gilly probably mistook Marjorie’s ebullience for a lack of commitment or dedication, but after Marjorie proved that she internalised and applied what she was taught and had demonstrated that she was willing to work very hard, Gilly softened. Another factor must have been the teacher’s awareness of the quality of the pupil’s voice. At that time Gilly had about twenty other students, including the Australian coloratura soprano Rita Miller, but none of these had the spectacular voice Marjorie was blessed with. It would not have been too long before she realised that she had a potential star on her hands, one of those rare gilt-edged assets no singing teacher, no matter how famous they are, can afford to let slip through their fingers.2

Marjorie also came to understand why her teacher was ‘a tough cookie’, as she later described her in an American journal. Madame Gilly had had a hard life. As Cécile Roma she had enjoyed a successful career as a mezzo-soprano in France and had then married the charismatic French-Algerian baritone Dinh Gilly (Brownlee’s future teacher). In 1909 both were engaged by the Metropolitan Opera in New York and made their debuts with the Met’s subsidiary company at the New Theatre, Dinh as Albert in Massenet’s Werther and Cécile in the small role of Amarante in Lecocq’s La Fille de Madame Angot. Dinh made a good impression and moved straight into the principal company. Cécile did not. When the Met gave a season in Paris in 1910, she was included in that company to sing minor roles and never returned to America.3 After that her husband kept her perpetually pregnant and off the stage, while his career blossomed and while he pursued a long love affair with another soprano, the famous Emmy Destinn.

After the birth of their third child, Dinh Gilly abandoned his wife to live openly with his mistress in her castle in Bohemia. With a young family to care for and support single-handedly, Cécile Gilly turned to teaching and, although she had built an enviable reputation by the time Marjorie came along, it had been a struggle, made harder by the continuing interference of her husband. As Marjorie described, the still infatuated Cécile welcomed him into her home and her bed whenever he deigned to visit her and she bore Gilly two more children. The struggle had been long and the toll it had exacted on Madame had left its mark.

From the outset, Gilly trained Marjorie as a soprano. The dark-toned contralto voice that had ponderously negotiated ‘In questa tomba oscura’ and ‘O Rest in the Lord’ a few months earlier was set aside and the bright-toned dramatic soprano that had been kept in check for so long was allowed to emerge and develop in its place. But the transition was not accomplished lightly.

Madame Gilly boasted, quite justifiably, that she was ‘the flag-bearer of technique’ and day after day for many weeks she permitted me to sing nothing but scales and exercises and when at last she allowed me to sing some arias they were excerpts from the operas of Handel, Mozart and Rossini or the cantatas of J.S. Bach, calculated to lighten up my voice and strengthen my technique.4

Gilly also developed and strengthened the ‘middle’ section of Marjorie’s voice—the notes linking the upper and lower registers that are so conspicuously missing in the recordings Marjorie had made before leaving Australia. This had the effect of integrating the registers into a seamless progression of notes and eliminating any audible ‘gear changing’.

By mid-1929 Gilly was beginning to coach Marjorie in complete opera roles. The title role in Gluck’s Alceste, which Gilly herself had sung on stage in France and Marjorie would later sing at the Met in New York, was the first. For this she renewed her acquaintance with the young pianist who had accompanied her at her audition with Gilly, who had turned out to be Madame’s eldest daughter, Renée, just a year older than Marjorie and assisting her mother while she prepared for a career of her own as a mezzo-soprano.5

Cécile Gilly insisted that her pupils learn every note of any role they studied before she began to instruct them on interpretation, and helping Marjorie do this was Renée Gilly’s task. Marjorie’s diaries for the years she studied in Paris show that she spent as much time working with Renée as she did with Cécile, although Marjorie never acknowledged Renée’s contribution when she came to discuss or write about her training.

Once again Marjorie’s excellent memory came to her aid as she learned Alceste and then a sequence of other parts with Renée coaching and prompting her from the piano—note by note and phrase by phrase for hour upon hour. Within a few months she had mastered another five roles: the title role in Aida, Valentine in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Salomé in Massenet’s Hérodiade and the title role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda—all but the last, roles she would sing on stage when her career commenced. Aida, Donna Anna and Gioconda were learned in Italian first and then in French to accommodate the practice in France’s opera houses of singing almost everything in French. In each case Marjorie then moved on to study the vocal and histrionic intricacies of performing these roles with Madame Gilly.

Six principal roles in six months may seem like an inflated claim, but time and again throughout her career, Marjorie proved that she could learn shorter parts in a couple of weeks and longer ones in a month—or two, at the most—and the proof of how efficient she was at this lies in the almost complete absence of criticism against her for lapses in either words or music.6

Marjorie also began French lessons with Marguerite Palustre and soon had an idiomatic command of the language, which allowed her to communicate easily and to sing roles in French with verisimilitude.

Mademoiselle Palustre set me taxing exercises. For a word like ‘Dieu’ which crops up frequently in opera, I had to repeat over and over again ‘Dieu grand’, ‘Dieu bon’, ‘Dieu de toute clémence’ etc. This was very important as it was not possible to get into the Opéra as a regular if one sang French with a foreign accent.7

It seems that, from the beginning of her studies in Paris, it was the unanimous objective of all Marjorie’s teachers to get her onto the roster of the Paris Opéra. Setting aside the question of national pride in the company itself—every Parisian believes the Opéra is, always has been and always will be the best in the world—there were good musical reasons for Marjorie to set her sights on a stage career. At this point in the development of her voice she had the capability to sing what the French call ‘Falcon’ roles. These are a range of taxing soprano roles in French operas requiring power, endurance, a solid middle register and a strong upper register, rising to a top ‘D’. Good examples are Valentine in Les Huguenots, which Marjorie had learned, and Rachel in Halévy’s La Juive, which she would soon set about learning.

The operas in which these roles occur are performed most often in France and the Falcon parts are difficult to cast. Lighter-voiced sopranos find them heavy-going and most Wagnerian sopranos lack the agility to sing them. Marjorie could and did sing these roles and in later years when she joined the ranks of the Wagnerians, she was one of the few who retained enough vocal agility to be able to continue to sing them.

Cornélie Falcon, the French soprano after whom these roles were named, also had a ‘wild’ quality about her singing—a calculated abandon which excited audiences. Marjorie also possessed that quality, which was confirmed by an unexpected commentator. One morning when Marjorie was having a lesson with Cécile Gilly, the maid interrupted and announced anxiously: ‘Monsieur est ici’, and into the studio strode Dinh Gilly.

The famous baritone was now in his fifties and had retired from the stage, but he was still charismatic. We can probably be confident of Marjorie’s reaction to his shock of black hair just starting to turn grey, his misshapen nose (it had been broken more than once) and his dark-ringed eyes. It was now apparent to Marjorie why so many women had fallen for this man and she found herself feeling a little flushed in his presence. Monsieur Gilly insisted the lesson continue and he sat down to listen to Marjorie. Later he exclaimed: ‘Magnifique! She is like a young horse this one!’ Then he remonstrated with his wife: ‘For God’s sake, Cécile, don’t try to tame her. There are too many tame creatures in the world today!’8

Cécile Gilly was not about to tame ‘the young horse’, but she did feel the need to curb some of the extracurricular activities Marjorie was pursuing which she felt might be harmful to her pupil’s voice and studies. Marjorie had found indoor tennis courts and indoor swimming baths not far from Avenue Trudaine and indulged in long bouts of ball bashing and swimming. Madame took her aside one day and remonstrated with her about wasting energy on les sports when she could have been studying or practising her singing—or preparing for le concert. Marjorie dutifully agreed but did not give up these typically Aussie pursuits; she simply never mentioned them again within Gilly’s hearing.

The concert Gilly referred to was a twice-yearly event she organised in her studio to highlight the talents of her students to invited guests from the city’s musical fraternity. At the next, on 12 June 1929, Marjorie sang ‘Divinités du Styx’ from Alceste and the taxing aria ‘Bel raggio lusinghier’ from Rossini’s Semiramide. The noble Alceste aria remained in Marjorie’s repertoire throughout her career and we have a fine ‘off air’ recording of it by which we can judge Marjorie’s accomplishment in it, but of ‘Bel raggio’ we have nothing. It would be fascinating to know how Marjorie coped with the rapid scales and stratospheric top notes of this aria, but we can only guess. There are no reports of this concert, which rates as Marjorie’s semi-public and pre-professional debut in Paris.

Gilly must have been pleased with Marjorie’s performance for she invited her, along with other students, to vacation with her in the historic old town of Euse in the Midi-Pyrénées, during August. Madame had a summer villa there called ‘Mont Fleurie’ which could house about two-thirds of the students and the rest were billeted in the town. As this trip took place before the time Gilly softened towards Marjorie, she was not one of the privileged ones chosen to stay at the villa. Instead she, Rita Miller and a girl from New Zealand named Gladys Petrie were installed in a cottage in the village—an annex to the local auberge—with Marguerite Palustre to guard them. Three high-spirited antipodeans living across the road from a pub was a sure recipe for trouble, and fun and games began almost immediately, with ‘Marge’ as the ringleader.

Madame had presented each of the girls with two pairs of thick white stockings and instructed them to wear them at all times in order to satisfy the strict moral standards of rural France. The trio found these far too hot and the young women could be found on the first few afternoons sunbathing on the verge in front of the cottage, hatless, stockingless and sipping aperitifs smuggled from across the road.

The food the auberge supplied was good but insufficient to satisfy the large appetites the girls had, so they made frequent sorties on the auberge’s orchard after dark, stealing peaches and pears. To protect their legs from mosquitoes, the trio donned their white stockings for these raids, and that proved their undoing. The owner of the auberge spotted six white legs in the moonlight one night and apprehended them loaded with baskets of his fruit.

Next morning Madame came storming down from the villa like an avenging fury, waving a furled umbrella and complaining about the disgrace Marjorie, Rita and Gladys had brought upon her. The girls and their ineffectual chaperone were removed to a quaint old farm house, where it was hoped they could do less damage.

Some American girls were already installed at the farmhouse and Marjorie had a room across the hall from one of them—a rather fey creature named ‘Janie’ who spent her time writing fairy stories. Years later when Marjorie sang at the Civic Opera House in Chicago for the first time, ‘Janie’ turned up and introduced herself as Jane Crusinberry, author of radio serials and a household name in America.

There were also bats in the bedrooms, ducks in the kitchen and a flighty horse in the yard called ‘Colibri’ whom nobody had ever been able to ride. Marjorie bet the other girls that she could ride ‘Colibri’ and leapt onto the horse’s back. The horse bolted and Marjorie clung to its mane. It was not long before Marjorie had settled the animal and was doing what she had done in Winchelsea—tearing along with the wind blowing in her face and singing at the top of her voice. This time it was Donna Anna’s ‘Vengeance’ aria from Don Giovanni. Colibri headed towards Gilly’s villa and without reins Marjorie could do little to divert him. As rider and horse shot by, an outraged Madame threw up a window and shouted: ‘Marjoree! Marjoree! You’ll break your neck … and you’re singing sharp!’

Back in Paris, another Australian, Norma Gadsden, came to live at the Grodets and to study with Cécile Gilly. Gadsden was also a dramatic soprano who later turned to Wagner, subsequently becoming a respected singing teacher under her married name of Madame Dominique Modesti. Gadsden hoped that Marjorie would smooth paths for her as Brownlee had done for Marjorie, but according to Lauris Elms who studied with the Modestis and heard the story directly from Gadsden, Marjorie saw the newcomer as a rival for the affections of Henri Grodet and the attention of Cécile Gilly. No doubt she was uncooperative and the two Victorians never became what Australians call ‘mates’, but Marjorie’s diary does show they socialised frequently and sang together on stage on a couple of occasions.

As the autumn of 1929 turned into winter and the anniversary of Marjorie’s arrival in Paris approached, she continued her studies with Cécile Gilly and her coaching with Renée Gilly, adding five more roles to her repertoire: Rachel in La Juive, Marguerite in Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, Sélika in Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, Santuzza in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and the title role in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Of these she would sing Rachel several times on stage, Sélika just twice and the others not at all, and yet their learning added to her knowledge and her versatility and, she hoped, hastened the day when the doors of the Opéra would open to her.

On 26 November Marjorie made what could be described as her ‘official’ debut in Paris in a concert at the prestigious Salle Gaveau. Unlike the earlier studio concert, this one was open to the public, but as Marjorie had to pay for the privilege of singing rather than be paid for it, it hardly qualifies as her professional debut. Philippe Gaubert, principal conductor at the Opéra, a minor composer and a major friend of Cécile Gilly’s approached Gilly for performers for a small concert of his own music. Gaubert came to the studio and listened to a handful of pupils chosen by Gilly, including Marjorie. The next day the successful students received a note from Madame impressing on them the generosity of the opportunity they were being offered and informing them that if they paid her an agent’s fee of 100 francs each, they could avail themselves of it. Such pragmatism might have seemed out of place in an artistic milieu, except in Paris.

Marjorie duly paid her 100 francs and sang Gaubert’s orchestral song cycle Au Jardin de l’infante (settings of poems by Albert Samain) with members of the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, conducted by the composer. Because the concert took place on a Sunday, none of the critics from the newspapers attended, so although there are no reviews there is plenty of other evidence that Marjorie’s singing was successful. She alone among the singers was asked for an encore and with Gaubert beaming down from the podium, she repeated the final song in the cycle. Gilly was so pleased with her performance that any lingering reservations she may have had about ‘Marjoree’ vanished and she was promoted to the position of ‘star’ pupil. However, when Maestro Gaubert suggested that the star pupil should immediately audition for the Opéra, Gilly prudently replied ‘Not yet, she is not ready’.

According to a report in Australian Musical News based on a letter from Marjorie to James Galbraith (of the Geelong Eisteddfod), Cécile Gilly was so impressed by Marjorie’s performance at Gaubert’s concert that she paid to have another set of private recordings made of Marjorie singing—‘some of which were to be sent home to Australia for Christmas’.9 There is no evidence to corroborate this claim, but it is tantalising to think that Marjorie’s voice might have been recorded in 1929. There is the possibility that such recordings might have preserved Marjorie’s singing of the Semiramide aria, Donna Anna’s ‘Vengeance’ aria or excerpts from any of the operas she was currently studying, but if these recordings were made, none is known to survive.

The Australian press had taken sporadic interest in Marjorie’s progress since her departure from Australia. Small articles appeared in Australian Musical News, usually as a result of letters from Marjorie to Boustead or Galbraith or reports from Thorold Waters, who had visited Marjorie in Paris. The general press took less interest, only occasionally inserting a paragraph, but as the result of a bizarre series of events, one Australian newspaper made a contribution to Marjorie’s success at the Gaubert concert by providing the gown she wore that evening.

While Marjorie was staying at Euse in August she had received an unexpected visit from the Paris representative of a newspaper, identified by Marjorie as the Melbourne Sun. They chatted about Australia and the newspaper man made casual and vague reference to an error his newspaper had printed about Marjorie and how he would like to buy her a gift by way of recompense. Marjorie answered that she would love a nice concert gown for when her career got underway. The wily newspaper representative then produced a typed document which Marjorie signed, relinquishing any right to further compensation for the error. ‘Now, when you get back to Paris you can go to any shop you choose and buy yourself a dress up to the value of 2000 francs and tell them to bill me for it’, he said as he hastily stowed the document in an inner pocket of his jacket.10

Marjorie got her dress—a magnificent creation in emerald green, trimmed with white swan’s down, which cost 3500 francs, but the newspaper paid up without a murmur. Later she found out the nature of the ‘error’ and realised that her naivety had robbed her of the opportunity for even more substantial compensation. The New York correspondent of the newspaper had cabled a story to Australia about the murder–suicide of the American actors Louis Bennison and Margaret Lawrence—Bennison had shot Lawrence then himself. A careless sub-editor in Australia had changed ‘Margaret Lawrence’ to ‘Marjorie Lawrence’ and so for a brief period some Australians believed it was their Sun Aria winner who had met that grim fate.

While Marjorie was enjoying her first public triumph in Paris other events were taking place at home in Winchelsea of which she was unaware. On 14 August Bill Lawrence made a new will, revoking an earlier one. Then, just as the family were sitting down to lunch on Christmas Day, he dropped dead. On Christmas afternoon a telegram arrived at the Grodets for Marjorie informing her that ‘Dad’ was dead. Marjorie was devastated and the memory of her father’s overheard words the year before must have come back to her with numbing force. A week later a letter from Lena explained that Bill Lawrence had been buried at Bambra Cemetery beside their mother and near their grandparents and that, as soon as the will was read, she would let Marjorie know how the estate was to be divided.

The Grodets comforted Marjorie and Madame Grodet whisked her off to the nearby church of Notre Dame de Lorette to pray for the soul of ‘le pauvre Papa’. In her grief Marjorie found comfort in this charming old classical-style church at the bottom of ‘The Street of Martyrs’ and briefly thought about embracing Roman Catholicism, but was deterred by the notion of how ‘Papa’ would have reacted if he had known what she was considering.11

Cécile Gilly kept her busy by assigning her a new role to study, one Marjorie had been longing to tackle—Puccini’s Tosca. Marjorie threw herself into learning the role and remembered later that whenever anyone visited Gilly’s studio around this time, her teacher would make her sing the passage in Act Three where Tosca describes killing the villainous Baron Scarpia, rising to a resplendent top C, and then dropping two octaves on the next note. Marjorie might well have empathised with Puccini’s hard-pressed heroine at this time for she was facing a catalogue of woes of her own.

Marjorie claimed that following her father’s death the allowance he had been sending her had ceased to arrive. In Interrupted Melody she wrote:

Ever since my arrival in Paris a monthly draft had arrived from my father which enabled me to pay for lessons, living expenses and other essentials and father had assured me that if anything happened to him he had instructed the family that the money should continue to come to me. My allowance had been adequate, but no more. I had not been able to save anything out of it. It was Percy who broke the news to me that my eldest brother, Lindsay, who had become head of the family, had decided no more money should be sent me. I had been away two years and already cost father too much money, Lindsay had told a family council: if I could not learn to sing in two years I never would.12

When Interrupted Melody came out in Australia in 1949, Lindsay Lawrence went into print himself with a letter to Geelong’s principal newspaper refuting Marjorie’s accusations that her allowance had been stopped and maintaining that the money she had received was in the nature of a loan which she had agreed to repay.13

Marjorie was touring Australia when Lindsay’s letter was published and on being shown it, she sent a reply to the same newspaper explaining that the letter had been a painful shock to her and that she had no wish to engage in public controversy over their unhappy differences.14 In private she strongly contradicted the claim that the allowance her father had offered her was ever a loan, but admitted that when she had asked Lindsay for money after their father’s death she had made a commitment to repay him when she could afford to, both parties recognising that repayment might be years away.

Marjorie’s bank statements for 1930 support Lindsay’s claim that he had cabled money to her, albeit with less regularity than their father—fifty pounds in January, and further identical sums in April, May, July and September, not an inconsiderable total, given the hardship of depression and drought then being experienced by Victorian farmers, and probably a substantial drain on his own pocket.15

There was a further shock in store for Marjorie when she received advice of the dispositions in Bill Lawrence’s new will. In it he bequeathed the largest portion of his estate (valued for probate at 17,707 pounds) to Lindsay in the form of an immediate payment of one thousand pounds free of probate or estate duty, plus all of his father’s farm machinery, livestock, crops and motor car. Lena was to receive a payment of six hundred pounds and Allan, four hundred pounds. The balance of the estate was to be sold, debts repaid and the remainder divided into five equal shares, one each for Lindsay, Ted, Eileen, Percy and Marjorie—but not Allan, who was now twenty.16 Ted, Percy and Allan immediately contested the will jointly and lodged a caveat with the probate office to suspend its processing.17

Marjorie believed Lindsay had coerced their father into making the new will to benefit himself and, according to living family members, Ted never spoke to his elder brother again. Whether either is true is strongly disputed by different branches of the family, but Marjorie’s enmity towards Lindsay is understandable, with her discovery that he (as chief executor of the will) would not release her share until she repaid him a substantial part of the sum she owed him. Marjorie refused and even had she been willing to repay her brother, she did not have the money.18

Relations between members of the Lawrence family were never the same after this wrangling, and Bill Lawrence’s estate was not finalised for seventeen years. There were desperate times during those years (including the present one in Paris) when Marjorie could have used her legacy. By the time she received it in 1947 it had been eroded to a pittance.

When the disruption to Marjorie’s allowance occurred, her friends in Paris rallied around. Cécile Gilly and Marguerite Palustre told her she could suspend payment for lessons and repay them when her career got underway. Gilly also bought her a badly needed new pair of shoes. Monsieur and Madame Grodet made a similar offer to suspend her board, but knowing how desperate their own situation was, Marjorie insisted on paying them a reduced rate. As an expression of his devotion to her, Henri Grodet offered to get a second job and support her. Another Australian student of Gilly’s, Emily Skyring, whose family were well off, pressed two 1000-franc notes onto her saying ‘Listen Marge, I hear you’re broke and things are pretty tough with you. You have a better voice than me and I reckon you’ll do something with it. I want you to spend this on whatever you need.’19 Marjorie managed with the concessions from her teachers, Skyring’s gift and rather a lot of small amounts she reluctantly accepted from Henri Grodet. Later she would pay back all these staunch supporters in full, although none expected it at the time.

Another good ‘mate’ from the Australian community in Paris was Archie Longden, whom she met at the Brownlees and who also came from Geelong. Longden was a young, music-loving accountant who lived in a garret near the École Militaire and dreamed of becoming a concert promoter. Among all her friends in Paris, only Longden left a written account of their friendship:

I remember when I first met Marge. She rushed into the room talking voluble French and carrying a bundle of music. After that we went many times to the opera and heard the famous Wagner singers of the day—Lotte Lehmann and Frida Leider singing the roles in which Marge would later have such success. We were both poor so sat in the gallery or ‘hen roost’ as it is called in Paris and by risking our necks could sometimes see half the stage! However the seats only cost eight francs and as I used to take along the words and Marge the score, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.20

Marjorie and Archie also discovered a mutual love of circus and often went together to the Cirque d’Hiver’ in the Marais and Cirque Medrano on the notorious Boulevard de Rochechouart, both establishments made famous in the paintings of Toulouse Lautrec and Picasso. At Cirque d’Hiver they laughed until they cried at the musical antics of the clown ‘Grock’, and at the Medrano they gasped as the glamorous tightrope walker ‘Barbette’ revealed herself at the end of the act as Mr Vander Clyde, a cowboy from Texas.

What Henri Grodet thought of Marjorie’s friendship with Longden is not on record, but there is no evidence that their relationship ever got beyond mateship, while her romance with Grodet continued to blow hot and cold for another six years. The Grodets did not approve of le cirque so Henri escorted Marjorie to the cinema instead. Marjorie found French-language films helped her to develop her French accent and Henri translated any parts of the dialogue she didn’t understand, often to the annoyance of other ticket holders. The reverse applied when they indulged in an English-language movie and then there were fewer objections from the audience who listened attentively to Marjorie’s running commentary in French.

Marjorie’s lessons with Marguerite Palustre came to an end during 1930 and she began to take German lessons instead. This coincided with Cécile Gilly’s decision that it was time Marjorie began to study the operas of Richard Wagner. Marjorie would learn the great Wagner soprano roles in French, but knowledge of German was preparation for the day when she would have to relearn them in their original language to sing them beyond the borders of France. Learning German proved more difficult than learning French as Marjorie had no one apart from her teacher to converse with and her progress was slow.

Marjorie continued to study regularly with Cécile Gilly and work with Renée Gilly through 1930 and 1931, adding another nine roles to the twelve she had already learned: Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther, the title roles in Richard Strauss’s Salome and Reyer’s Salammbô, Brunhilde in Reyer’s Sigurd and five Wagner parts: Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde, Kundry in Parsifal and two of the Brünnhildes: in Die Walküre and Siegfried.21

Marjorie would never sing Charlotte (a mezzo-soprano role occasionally appropriated by sopranos) or Salammbô on stage and Reyer’s Brunhilde was a concession to the popularity of his opera Sigurd in France—a treatment by a French composer of the same Nordic legends that inspired Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Marjorie would sing in Sigurd on stage several times and make excellent recordings of Brunhilde’s solos.

Richard Strauss’s Salome, based on a play by Oscar Wilde, would become a signature role for Marjorie, sung to acclaim on four continents and while she was learning this role at Gilly’s studio it provided an encounter that was to have long-reaching impact on her career:

Mary Garden was with Madame Gilly at the time to do some kind of a ‘refresher’ course, and I arrived at the studio one day to discover that the famous soprano was on hand to initiate me into the wonders of Strauss’ Salome.22

Scottish by birth, American by upbringing and French by inclination, Mary Garden was one of the most exciting and original artists of her day. She had created the role of Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelleas et Mélisande in 1902 and sung Strauss’s Salome all over the world with a heady mix of success and scandal. At this time Garden was still singing but her career was winding down. It was a stroke of good fortune that she then had the time and the patience to help Marjorie come to grips with the very difficult music of Salome and help her to develop a credible portrayal of Strauss’s psychotic and erotic teenager, who has to both sing and dance on stage.

The first extract from a Wagner opera Gilly taught Marjorie was in some ways the most challenging of all, Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene from the final act of Götterdämmerung, the concluding opera in the Ring Cycle. While that might seem a strange choice as an introduction to the composer and the multifarious role of Brünnhilde, it did give Marjorie a view of her ultimate destination—dramatically and musically—before she embarked on the long journey through three operas and about eight hours of music.

The first complete Wagner role Marjorie learned was Elisabeth from Tannhäuser, followed by Brangäne from Tristan und Isolde, another ‘mezzo’ role occasionally appropriated by young dramatic sopranos in the past. Both these roles would figure in Marjorie’s career when it finally got underway. Kundry in Parsifal was studied next, a role to which Marjorie was ideally suited and which she would eventually sing on stage. With these roles under her belt Marjorie set out on that journey through the ‘Ring’, learning the relatively short but extremely arduous part of Brünnhilde in Siegfried, then the same character in Die Walküre. She would tackle the rest of Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung in 1932.

Marjorie enjoyed learning these challenging parts and they gave her the opportunity to explore and gauge her true vocal stamina and to immerse herself in the trials and tribulations of Wagner’s warrior maid, a character she found both sympathetic and infinitely rewarding. Just occasionally, enthusiasm overcame prudence. While Marjorie was practising Brünnhilde’s battle cry from Die Walküre with Renée Gilly at the piano one day, Cécile shouted up from a lower floor ‘You sound like a train whistle!’

Another great soprano turned up at Gilly’s studio while Marjorie was learning these roles: the Russian Félia Litvinne. Litvinne was then living in retirement in Paris, but in her day she had been a leading Wagnerian soprano and an acclaimed exponent of several other roles now in Marjorie’s repertoire. Litvinne had been Paris’s first Isolde and first Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung. Like Garden, Litvinne was able to offer sound advice based on practical experience gained on the world’s great opera stages, in her case for over forty years. It is also not difficult to find echoes of Litvinne’s singing style in Marjorie’s. Comparison of their recordings reveals the same vigorous cut and thrust when singing the heroic music of the warrior maid and the same verbal acuity in the treatment of Wagner’s text, qualities that may well have been part of a legacy from the older singer to the younger. Another legacy was a small collection of Litvinne’s own stage costumes, which she presented to Marjorie. After some alteration (carried out by Marjorie herself, who was half the older singer’s girth), these were gratefully added to the wardrobe Marjorie was assembling in preparation for the time she would be required to provide all her own costumes.23

This was an intense period of learning for Marjorie and she quite rightly indulged herself with a couple of short summer holidays in the company of Mimi Grodet. In 1930 they visited the resort town of Vichy in the Auvergne and in 1931 went further afield to Rome, staying in a cheap hotel near the Trevi fountain. Marjorie dragged Mimi around the locations where the fictitious story of Tosca is set. They strolled through the cool gloom of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, stared at the Palazzo Farnese and climbed to the roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo, from which Tosca spectacularly leaps to her death at the end of Puccini’s opera. But not everything in Italy was so appealing or as gratifying—it was while on this trip that Marjorie discovered how inadequate her Italian was. Furthermore, the tourists encountered an air of menace and a tension in the city they could not ignore. Squads of Mussolini’s ‘black shirts’ paraded about, graffiti on walls proclaimed ‘Il Duce ha sempre ragione’ (‘The Duce is always right’) and Fascist flags flapped from rooftops and balconies.

This was Marjorie’s first brush with Fascism on an organised scale. At the time and in the excitement of a first holiday in the eternal city, it is doubtful whether Marjorie appreciated the full import of what she witnessed. But the fact that she noted her impressions indicates that the seeds of concern were sown. In a short time Fascism and Nazism would wreak havoc on the lives of many of her friends and thwart some of Marjorie’s own plans.