Chapter Twelve
The Glory Years

With hindsight Marjorie would look back on the period between her return to the United States after her first Australian tour and June 1941 when a horrendous misfortune befell her in Mexico City as the high point of her career. It was certainly the period where her services were most in demand, when she commanded the highest fees and when her popularity was greater than it had ever been.1 At the time, however, Marjorie saw these two years accomplishments as nothing more than an increase in the pace towards a summit that was not yet in sight.

My career was surging on to the topmost levels of vocal achievement, and because I was young, strong and healthy, I derived the last ounce of joy and triumph that came my way.2

A month into her next Met season, Marjorie celebrated her thirty-third birthday, an age at which many dramatic sopranos are only beginning to experiment with the arduous roles she was already famous for and, given the excellent state of her voice, which seemed to be getting better and stronger, she could reasonably expect to have another twenty years in which to refine her art and enjoy that ‘joy and triumph’ at the top of her profession.

The increasing strength and responsiveness of Marjorie’s voice was due in part to the influence of an elderly American named Louis Bachner. Bachner made himself known to Marjorie on her return from Australia and offered his services as a vocal adviser—an expert Marjorie could consult on all matters pertaining to her voice, her singing and her repertoire—and Marjorie accepted. Bachner had an impressive CV, having held the post of Professor of Singing at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik for twenty-six years, teaching Karin Branzell, Lily Djamel and Ria Ginster and acting as vocal adviser to Leider, Heinrich Schlusnus, Sigrid Onegin and Michael Bohnen.

Marjorie believed that Bachner helped her (in her own words) ‘to loosen up my voice’ and to correct a few unfortunate vocal habits she had developed since leaving Cécile Gilly’s studio. In fact it was not so much ‘the voice’ Bachner worked on with Marjorie as her muscles and her breathing apparatus. A tightness that was giving some of her notes a pinched quality and causing pitch problems had been creeping into Marjorie’s singing in recent times and with Bachner’s help this was replaced by a new (or new-found) relaxation, which helped her voice considerably, heralding a new blossoming in the beauty, richness and surety of Marjorie’s singing, which is clearly evident in broadcasts of her performances in 1940. It also permitted those moments referred to earlier where Marjorie could (when she chose) emulate Flagstad’s noble sound. All this was accomplished after a few short weeks of working together and was testament to his knowledge and her willingness to experiment and improve.3 The New York critics noticed the difference. Olin Downes reported: ‘Marjorie Lawrence is singing better this season than ever before’ and Francis Perkins in the Herald Tribune commented that this period marked a new stage in her evolution as a great singer.4

There were also substantial changes at the Met when Marjorie returned on 6 December 1939 to sing the first of nine performances of Die Walküre. Not for the first time during this turbulent decade, the organisation was in serious financial trouble and a ‘Save the Met’ fund had been established to raise enough capital to rescue both theatre and company. Artur Bodanzky was dead—dying suddenly four days before the season commenced. Erich Leinsdorf was now in charge of the German wing and Felix Wolfes had obtained an engagement as an assistant conductor.5 Melchior and Flagstad had called a temporary truce to their squabbling and joined forces to oppose musical changes Leinsdorf was making, including his restoration of the cuts Bodanzky had made to the Wagner operas. The tenor was now feuding openly with Leinsdorf over the conductor’s demands that he attend all rehearsals and Flagstad was simmering with resentment over Edward Johnson’s reluctance to engage Edwin McArthur. Both publicly questioned Leinsdorf’s fitness to succeed Bodanzky—a concern, incidentally, Marjorie did not share. Another formidably voiced Wagnerian dramatic soprano had also joined the roster this season: Helen Traubel—eight years older than Marjorie and with no international reputation and limited stage experience. Circumstances would later catapult Traubel into stardom, but at the time neither Flagstad nor Marjorie would have seen the homely looking, unassuming soprano from St Louis as a threat to their respective positions.

Leopold Sachse had also decided to introduce some innovations in the staging of the Ring this season and Marjorie was involved in one of the least successful. To exploit the public’s continuing fascination with Marjorie’s equestrian skills, Sachse decided that Brünnhilde should hold Grane by the bridle throughout the Götterdämmerung dawn duet and that Siegfried would then lead the horse off stage. A suggestion made at rehearsal that Siegfried should mount the horse and ride it off stage was greeted with derision by Melchior and alarm by the horse, which was not much bigger than the tenor.

Marjorie agreed to hold the horse and Melchior to leading it off, and it was further evidence of Marjorie’s skill as a horsewoman and her cool-headedness that she kept the animal under control for almost ten minutes without missing a note as she and Melchior sang the demanding duet. In performance the presence of the horse so close to the footlights proved too much of a distraction for the audience and to everyone’s relief that ‘inspired’ idea was scrapped after one performance.

That devoted old horse also figured in another remarkable occurrence during the final performance of Götterdämmerung this season. Each time the animal was on stage and each time Marjorie sang, the creature whinnied in distress, the final pages of the opera becoming a bizarre duet between horse and soprano. At the time no one could account for the animal’s uncharacteristic behaviour, but with hindsight Marjorie wondered if it had sensed what she could not have known at the time—that this was the last time they would appear on stage together and the last time Marjorie would ride this or any other horse into Siegfried’s funeral pyre.

Two of Marjorie’s performances from this season were broadcast and are available on CD—both of Die Walküre. The first comes from New York and preserves Marjorie’s second appearance in the house as Sieglinde—on her birthday—with Flagstad singing Brünnhilde. The second comes from the spring tour and captures a performance in the Boston Opera House with Marjorie as Brünnhilde and Lotte Lehmann as Sieglinde. Both are conducted by Leinsdorf and both also provide remarkably vivid sound, at least equal to what radio listeners would have heard at the time.

Marjorie’s Sieglinde is no wilting violet. She sounds (as she should) like a wife who is prepared to drug her husband to save the man she loves, but she is more youthful than Lehmann and more vulnerable than Flagstad. The first act of the New York performance is a dramatic and vocal tour de force. Melchior is in tremendous voice. He holds onto the words ‘Walse, Walse’ for about a dozen beats instead of the required three, which may have been his revenge on Leinsdorf, but it is hard to criticise him when he pours out such golden, trumpet-like tone, with Marjorie matching him measure for measure.

Marjorie proves in the second act just what a consummate vocal actress she had become. She conveys every ounce of Sieglinde’s guilt, confusion and fear without ever disturbing the musical line. This is followed by Flagstad singing with an other-worldly beauty of tone, and the contrast between the two soprano roles (fallible woman and daughter of the gods) is for once fully realised and made explicit to the spellbound audience.

The scene between Brünnhilde and Sieglinde in the final act is also a revelation. After Flagstad demonstrates her vocal superiority over the other Valkyries, Marjorie sings Sieglinde’s part with her newfound radiance. It is as if she were saying to Flagstad: ‘See, I can sing just as beautifully as you when I want to’ and the combination of these two remarkable sopranos creates a kind of vocal plenitude that has no equal in this age of puny voices.

Six weeks separate the New York and Boston broadcasts and in the interim Melchior had celebrated his fiftieth birthday. Marjorie sent him a huge floral arrangement and received a card in return signed ‘love from Lauritz’. The Boston performance was close to the end of the spring tour and finds the artists sounding a little tired in places. Melchior seems less involved than in the earlier broadcast and so does Marjorie, this time singing Brünnhilde. Then, in the second scene of Act Two (perhaps inspired by Thorborg’s splendidly telling Fricka in the previous scene), she suddenly seems to pull herself together and the long exchange with Wotan (Schorr) comes brilliantly to life. The superior sound and Leinsdorf’s clean textures allow us to hear these two consummate artists inspiring one another and with their sincerity and conviction imprinting phrase after phrase on our memory. The magic continues with Melchior in the Todesverkündigung and here Marjorie finds that extra depth and understanding that eluded her in past years. Wagner singing does not get much better than this. Marjorie, Schorr and Leinsdorf bring the opera to a close with heart-rending intensity, and the Boston audience, knowing they have witnessed something special, roar their approval when the curtain falls.

When Marjorie makes her first solo curtain call, wolf whistles are added to the cacophony. Broadcast host Milton Cross in his concluding remarks mentions that ‘our lovely Brünnhilde this afternoon’ eschews such titles as ‘Madame’, ‘diva’ or ‘prima donna’, preferring to be called simply ‘Marjorie Lawrence’, and that she hails from Deans Marsh in Australia. No doubt most of the population of Deans Marsh were listening and gladdened to hear their little town mentioned, for this broadcast was also transmitted to Australia. In response to an interval appeal for the ‘Save the Met Fund’, the Lawrence family passed the hat around and gathered five pounds, which was duly sent to New York.

Not long after her return from Australia, Marjorie had received an offer from the opera company in St Louis to sing a role she had not sung before, one she and they thought would suit her and which might prove to be as popular as her Salome. A week after the Met spring tour ended in Dallas, Marjorie hastened to St Louis to begin rehearsals for her debut in the title role of Bizet’s Carmen. Marjorie’s old sparring partner from Cleveland, Jan Kiepura, was to sing Don José and Ezio Pinza was the dashing toreador Escamillo.

True to form, Kiepura set out to cause trouble at rehearsal, putting his knee on Marjorie’s throat, then throwing her so far across the stage that she almost slid into the orchestra pit. Breathless and having missed her next cue, Marjorie called a halt to the rehearsal and marched up to Kiepura, who was standing centre stage looking innocent and unconcerned.

I told him in no uncertain terms that if he ever did that to me again I would kick him in the balls so hard he wouldn’t be able to sing Don José or anything else for a very long time.6

Marjorie walked out on the rehearsal and left it to the company management to sort out the problem. As the whole enterprise had been developed around her assumption of a new, popular role and Kiepura was running out of opera houses that would tolerate his antics, it didn’t take much persuasion to convince the tenor to behave himself, and the first performance, on 25 April 1940, went off without incident.

The St Louis public liked Marjorie’s glamorous interpretation of Carmen, but the critics did not. Many famous divas have found themselves adrift trying to understand the gypsy girl’s complex character and instil her music with the right mix of insouciance and nobility, and on the evidence of her debut performance it seems likely that Marjorie would join their ranks. Marjorie would sing Carmen a few times more and might have grown into the part as she had so many others, but time ran out before she had that chance.

The whole of Act Two from a San Francisco performance the following October is available on CD and it reveals the essential ingredient Marjorie failed to deliver. She sings accurately and her French is better than that of the rest of the cast, but her character does not reach across the footlights—everything is generalised and all too reliant (one imagines) on her facial expression, her costumes, her acting and her much publicised dancing.

It is encouraging to know that the most severe critic of her Carmen was Marjorie herself. After the first performance in St Louis she wrote in her diary ‘Not so good’ underlining the first word. The San Francisco performances were also sung by default rather than choice. Marjorie had been engaged to sing Minnie in La Fanciulla del West but, as in Buenos Aires in 1936, another cast member fell sick and the management begged her to sing Carmen instead. After these performances Marjorie wrote in her diary ‘Still not so hot’.7

Evidence that Marjorie was singing well at the time of these Carmen performances can be found on a group of studio recordings she made for RCA Victor in May—the most successful batch since Paris. Over three days and accompanied by Felix Wolfes, Marjorie recorded multiple takes of eleven songs, including some she had unsuccessfully recorded the year before. Six of these were released on 78s and two more found their way onto an LP years later. These included three songs by Pfitzner, who was still living in Germany but out of favour with the Nazis. Both singer and pianist give carefully considered and beautifully controlled performances of these difficult songs. Perhaps the most difficult, ‘Stimme der Sehnsucht’, is the most successful—full of atmosphere, sombre colour and dramatic fervour. Marjorie’s diction is excellent in these songs and why her lovely singing and Wolfes splendid playing of Pfitzner’s ‘Die Einsame’ had to wait for the LP era to be released is a mystery.

There are also thrilling performances of Strauss’s ‘Lied an meinen Sohn’ and ‘Des Dichters Abendgang’, where the placement of the voice is sure and Marjorie’s rich tone is matched by Wolfes’s at the piano, both artists achieving a truly ‘Straussian’ sweep. Experts will still find aspects of Marjorie’s lieder singing to criticise when comparisons are made with the greatest, but these are recordings no open-minded student of great singing would wish to be without.

The same applies to Marjorie singing some of the traditional English and Scottish songs recorded during these sessions. Curiously, it is Melba that the listener might be reminded of when hearing Marjorie sing ‘Danny Boy’, ‘Annie Laurie’, ‘My Ain Folk’ and ‘Down the Burn’. She brings the same kind of affecting simplicity her older compatriot brought to her recordings of such songs—‘John Anderson, My Jo’, for example. Verbal acuity, strong, well-placed tone and avoidance of sentimentality, plus excellent work from Wolfes, lend these recordings a timeless distinction.8

Days after Marjorie made these recordings, the Germans occupied Paris and propaganda film of German troops marching up the Champs Elysées and Hitler ogling the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower were shown in cinemas across America. Marjorie was deeply distressed by the news and concerned for the fate of the Grodets, Cécile Gilly, her employees in Rue Junot and her friends and colleagues at the Opéra. Cyril wrote numerous letters to Paris on Marjorie’s behalf, but it was months before any reply was received.

Two letters finally arrived, which, far from reassuring Marjorie, added to her distress. The first came from Henri Grodet reporting that he, Mimi and their parents were safe, but Marjorie’s apartment in Rue Junot had been looted by the Germans and the whereabouts of Yvonne and Eugenie were unknown. The second letter came from Sam Waagenaar, one of Cécile Gilly’s few male pupils. He now lived in California and had received a letter from Gilly in which she requested he share her news with Marjorie. Madame had fled Paris before the Germans arrived and was living in her villa at Euse. Her son Max was a prisoner of war in Germany and her daughter Yvonne had recently died of blood poisoning, leaving Cécile to care for her three children, including a four-month-old baby. Another daughter, Paulette, had entrusted the care of her twins to her mother and so had Renée Gilly, who had one child. ‘Thus,’ Waagenaar reported, ‘Madame Gilly is heartbroken and left to care for six children without any help’.9

The effects of the war in Europe were spreading rapidly around the globe, shrinking the sphere of activity for singers now domiciled in the United States to little more than North, South and Central America. Because of this, Marjorie changed agents this year, leaving the international-focused NBC Artists Services for the domestic-focused Vincent Attractions of West 57th Street, New York. J.J. Vincent and his assistant Henry Phohl managed to secure her lucrative opera and concert engagements from Boston to San Diego and Seattle to Miami and Marjorie was also offered another contract to sing at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires from August to October 1940. She was reluctant to accept this last offer, not because of artistic considerations, but because there were many Nazi sympathisers there and word had got around that Buenos Aires was a dangerous place for British subjects. In the end Marjorie decided the benefits outweighed the risk and she signed.

The new director of the Colón, Fiore Ugarte, offered her $US8400 in cash to sing six performances of Brünnhilde, two of Salome and five of a role Marjorie had been longing to sing again—Kundry in Parsifal. While the figure was not large for so many performances, Ugarte also agreed to pay all Marjorie and Cyril’s expenses, including first class passage to and from Buenos Aires and three months occupancy of a luxury suite at the Alvear Palace.

Marjorie and Cyril travelled from New York to Buenos Aires (via Barbados) on the cruise liner Uruguay, on which the passengers were entertained by the All American Youth Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Marjorie had become used to the fast Atlantic liners and found this cruise ship tiresomely tedious. ‘I’m bored to death on this boat—it’s too slow’, she noted in her diary. Eventually they reached their destination and a limousine provided by Ugarte whisked Marjorie and Cyril off to the Alvear Palace.

Marjorie’s first appearance at the Colón this season (in Die Walküre), was broadcast and has been released on CD. The sound is variable: sometimes good, more often distorted and muddy. In places extraneous noises intrude. In Act One, for example, what sounds like a small revolution seems to be taking place in the background, with some very unmusical sounds. The rest of the cast sing impressively but offer no real competition to their counterparts in New York and, although Marjorie is in splendid voice, this performance adds little to what we already know about her ‘Walküre’ Brünnhilde.

It does, however, confirm how consistently brilliantly and effortlessly she now sings and acts the role and provides more of those memorable moments where she emulates Flagstad’s sepulchral tone. It is also interesting to hear her adapting herself to the direction of a third fine conductor with his own views on how the score should go. In this case it is Erich Kleiber who manages to combine Bodanzky’s feverish tension with Leinsdorf’s clarity, putting strain on most of the cast but not on Marjorie, who seems indefatigable. Apart from the single act of Carmen from San Francisco, this is the last ‘live’ recording we have of Marjorie before her illness and it is further proof of the heights to which she had climbed—and an indication of what she would lose.

The audience that night was captivated by Marjorie and so were the local music critics, the Buenos Aires Herald pronouncing her ‘the world’s greatest Brünnhilde’.10 Herbert Janssen (singing Wotan) became ill during the run of Die Walküre and as no replacement was available, two performances had to be cancelled. The audience was compensated with an extra performance tacked onto the end of the season. By then the good folks of Buenos Aires had also witnessed Marjorie’s Salome for the first time and renewed their acquaintance with her Kundry. Marjorie’s vivid assumption of the Strauss role had bowled them over much as it had audiences in New York and Chicago, prompting the Buenos Aires Herald to go a step further and bestow on her the title ‘World’s greatest dramatic soprano’.11 The five performances of Kundry in ten days that followed must have taxed the whole cast, but Marjorie came through with flying colours. This time the critic of the Buenos Aires Herald found her ‘convincing’, ‘mysterious’, ‘terrifying’ and ‘seductive’.12

Ugarte was so impressed with his new prima donna that he offered her Isolde, the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde and Senta for the next season and asked if she might consider donating the helmet, spear and shield she had used in Die Walküre to the Colón Museum. Marjorie was happy to oblige and also to accede to a request from the British ambassador to Argentina to sing a benefit concert in Buenos Aires for the Lord Mayor of London’s Air Raid Appeal.

While in Buenos Aires Marjorie received a daily flood of fan mail from local music lovers and from rich cattle ranchers and sugar planters who offered her much more than admiration. Among these were a clutch of passionate cables: ‘Je t’aime, cherie’, ‘Vie impossible sans toi’ and ‘T’adore, t’adore’ etc. These came from Armand D’Ans who had been waiting for Marjorie when she arrived in Buenos Aires and proposed marriage again just before she left. Marjorie was happy to be escorted about town by the handsome Argentinean, and tempted to accept his offer, but again declined. D’Ans now had a successful architect’s practice in the city he loved and where his extended family lived. All this he was prepared to throw away for her before moving to the United States, but the sacrifice was too much for Marjorie’s conscience.

After the ‘slow boat to Argentina’ on the outward journey, Marjorie and Cyril decided to fly back to the US. D’Ans was at the airport to farewell them on what was to be a marathon flight—Buenos Aires to Santiago, then Lima, Cali, San Cristóbel, Guatemala, Mexico City, Los Angeles and finally San Francisco, where news of the cancellation of La Fanciulla del West and her second attempt at Carmen awaited her.

In the third act of the Bizet opera, Carmen and her companions try to read what the future holds for them in the dramatic card scene. Carmen’s companions see untold riches and marriage to noble and distinguished men, while Carmen discovers she is being stalked by death. If Marjorie had been superstitious (which she was not), she might have seen her own future in the combined readings of all three characters, for she was about to be courted by a prince, turn him down for a better man and come close to losing her life, all in the next few months.

The prince was a dashing fifty-year-old Russian named Serge Obolensky Neledinsky Meletzky who could trace his lineage back to the ninth century. Despite having at least one saint on his family tree, Obolensky (he dropped the last two names when he moved to the US) was anything but a saint. He had been twice married and twice divorced, first to Grand Duchess Catherine Romanov, then to the American heiress Alice Astor. By the time Marjorie met him he was considered one of the world’s most famous playboys, maintaining that reputation long after he disappeared from her life, with one of his last conquests being (according to Hollywood gossip) the young Marilyn Monroe.13

Obolensky saw Marjorie singing Carmen and apparently decided he wanted a much closer look. He opened his campaign by sending her huge bunches, baskets and urns of exotic flowers, sometimes twice a day, with charming cards embossed with his family crest, each addressed to ‘My little princess’ and expressing his admiration in ever more ardent terms.

Serge had a flair for the composition of these billets-doux. His stock of heart-fluttering phrases, all, to the best of my knowledge and experience, original, was endless. And, thoroughly normal woman that I am, the ‘princess’ idea was not without appeal.14

Obolensky moved to the next phase in his conquest of Marjorie by giving her expensive gifts and escorting her to some of the most exclusive restaurants and night clubs in New York. Soon he was whispering marriage proposals in her ear and the ‘princess’ idea seemed to be moving towards a concrete possibility. Marjorie’s agent, J.J. Vincent, was all in favour of the idea. He could see ‘Princess Marjorie’ on billboards across the country and Cyril was over the moon, probably wondering whether Obolensky’s relations could manage a small title for him as well.

Obolensky followed Marjorie to Chicago, where she sang more performances of Carmen and Salome, to Minneapolis where she gave concerts with the Minneapolis Symphony and attended a fund-raising event in New York, at which she met the legendary pianist Jan Paderewski. Obolensky also agreed to be one of the patrons for another war charity concert Marjorie was planning to give in Carnegie Hall and she had almost made up her mind to accept his offer of marriage when she returned to the Met for the 1940–41 season.15

Marjorie embarked on her sixth season at the Met in a buoyant frame of mind, thanks to Obolensky and the prospect of performing the title role in an opera that had not been seen at the Met before. This was Gluck’s Alceste, the first complete opera Marjorie had studied with Cécile Gilly ten years earlier and which she had not yet sung—and on this occasion she almost missed out as well.

In the spring of 1940 when the current season was being planned, Edward Johnson decided that he should capitalise on the success of a new production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice two seasons earlier by mounting the Met’s first production of Alceste, 173 years after its premiere in Vienna.16 Marjorie made it known that she knew the role and Johnson promised to consider her for it. Later she learned that he had decided to bring a new singer into the company to sing Alceste—none other than her Paris rival, Germaine Lubin.

Marjorie was disappointed and resentful about the role going to Lubin, but Johnson’s choice was logical, since Lubin had sung Alceste to great acclaim in Paris and London and was arguably its greatest living exponent. As the US had not yet entered the war, it was hoped that the German authorities in Paris would give their favoured soprano a visa to travel outside France and, although Lubin kept her destination a secret from them, in the end the Germans declined her request. Just two weeks before rehearsals commenced, Johnson had to come, ‘cap in hand’, and ask Marjorie if she would take over the role.

Marjorie’s first instinct may have been to refuse Johnson’s request, but she knew that if she declined it would be given to the up-and-coming American soprano Rose Bampton, who had agreed to understudy Lubin. Marjorie also realised that being asked to perform in a Met premiere is not an everyday occurrence, since it ensures the singer a unique place in the company’s history. She agreed, and rehearsals got under way with the producer Herbert Graf, the conductor Ettore Panizza and the rest of the cast, which included René Maison as Admetus and the young Leonard Warren as the High Priest of Apollo.

On the night of the premiere—24 January 1941—Marjorie received notes and cables from many of her fellow artists wishing her well, including Helen Traubel, who had sung Sieglinde with her the previous season. The public enjoyed the performance and gave the singers a warm reception, but the critics were not impressed. Graf’s production relied very heavily on spectacle and it seems that he and Johnson had concerns that Gluck’s sombre work might send their patrons to sleep if they didn’t overload it with visual effects. The critics revelled in pointing out aspects of the production that were out of keeping with the score, the story and the period in which it is set.

The same critics praised Marjorie’s noble singing of ‘Divinités du Styx’, but reported that she seemed to make tough going of the rest of score. Pitch problems and shortness of breath were mentioned, criticisms that had never been levelled at Marjorie before and which seem at odds with her recent performances in New York, Boston and Buenos Aires. As Olin Downes pointed out, Graf may have been partly responsible for this, as he made the singers sing much of their music while standing in uncomfortable, static poses simulating figures on a classical frieze.17

For a singer who threw herself physically as well as vocally into her roles, this must have been an enormous encumbrance—and to make matters worse Marjorie was suffering a debilitating, but thankfully, temporary malady which was affecting her emotionally and physically. She managed to get through the first two performances, but had to relinquish the third and fourth to Bampton, returning to the role for the final performance in March.18

Criticism of this kind was absent when Marjorie’s Wagner performances this season were reviewed, but these were plagued by political considerations. With German atrocities in Europe reported daily in the American press, Johnson feared a backlash from the public to German operas. He therefore scheduled fewer performances of Wagner at the beginning of the season until he could gauge the public’s mood. To everyone’s relief there were no complaints or protests, so the German wing was allowed to move into full swing by the fifth week. This meant that Marjorie’s appearance (and those of her regular colleagues) was delayed and apart from Alceste, Marjorie sang only two performances of Die Walküre (alternating as Sieglinde and Brünnhilde with Flagstad), two of Götterdämmerung, one of Siegfried and two of Lohengrin.

Marjorie’s first appearance on 2 January was also a red-letter day in her personal life. The man who would supplant all her previous boyfriends and lovers, marry her within three months and spend the next forty years at her side walked into Marjorie’s life that day—and if he was not a prince he would soon prove himself princely. Tom King (as he called himself) was a lanky young man with undistinguished features, a cheeky grin, bright eyes and an accent that betrayed his upbringing in a southern state of the union. He was also the antithesis of the exotic and romantic men Marjorie had previously been attracted to. Marjorie described their first meeting in Interrupted Melody:

There was no fanfare; no rumble from the drums to warn me of his approach. I had just finished singing Brünnhilde in Die Walküre and my dressing room was filled with friends and well-wishers. Out of the chattering throng about me he suddenly emerged, shook my hand, congratulated me and said: ‘My, but you must be tired. Why don’t you sit down?’ And reaching back through the crowd he dragged out a chair for me. The thought flashed through my mind that here was an extraordinarily considerate young man and I would have liked to go on talking with him, but in the melee there was no chance.19

A few nights later Marjorie was surprised to see the same young man at a party given by Edmee Busch Greenough. This mutual friend introduced him as Doctor Thomas King, a promising GP with a burgeoning practice located near Carnegie Hall. Marjorie recalled that they chatted briefly that evening, but she still didn’t learn much about this young man whom she found attractive, despite the fact that she was still in love with Serge Obolensky.

The next step in their association was a strange one. Marjorie received a letter from Tom saying he had seen her leaving the Met the previous night and had noticed she was not wearing a hat, despite the cold wind and steady snow fall. In his professional opinion (he wrote), that was extremely foolish and a great risk to her health. A woman with the intellect to memorise the Ring, he concluded, should have better sense.

This curious epistle both angered and intrigued Marjorie. For years she had become accustomed to slavish praise not criticism from people outside the music profession. Tom’s address was on the letter so she decided to ring him up and ‘give him a piece of her mind’.

But I learned it is extremely difficult to rebuke an American southerner. I attempted to castigate him but he replied to my opening tirade in his unruffled, even-measured drawl, and as I waited for him to round out his long, deliberate sentences, my annoyance evaporated.

The upshot of that phone call was that Marjorie agreed to attend a cocktail party with Tom the following night, but they never made it to the party. Tom arrived to collect Marjorie at six and as Cyril was out for the evening she invited him in. They ended up spending the whole evening talking.

I liked his quiet assertiveness, his provocative ideas, his capacity for sober discussion and the manner in which he took it for granted that the male is the boss.

Marjorie found out a great deal about Tom that evening. First she learned that he was just six weeks older than she, having been born on New Year’s Day in the same year. She also discovered that his middle name was Michael, but King was not his family name. He was the second son of Oscar and Mabel Boggs, struggling sharecroppers of Madison County, Indiana, at the time of Tom’s birth. Tom related how his family had moved to St Augustine, Florida, soon after his arrival and how his father had found work there as a cook in a humble café, later moving on to Miami and to a similar post in a large hotel. His loving parents (Tom told Marjorie) had worked hard and made many sacrifices to send him to medical school and on his graduation gave their blessing to him changing his name. ‘Tom Boggs’ he had decided did not sound prepossessing enough for a young doctor, so he became ‘Dr Thomas King’ legally adopting his mother’s family name.

Marjorie found Tom’s pride in his humble beginnings endearing and as he prepared to leave that evening, she suggested he accompany her to hear Grace Moore in a much-publicised revival of Montemezzi’s opera L’Amour Dei Tre Rei at the Met a couple of nights later. Marjorie reported:

That night did it. Serge was still sending me flowers and love notes and seeing me quite often, but after my first night out with Tom King, Serge was out of the race.

Serge Obolensky didn’t quit the field until after a confrontation between the two men. This occurred during Marjorie’s second performance in Lohengrin on 28 February. At her first performance (a month earlier) she had permitted Obolensky to keep her company in her dressing room during the long wait before Ortrud reappears at the end of the opera.20 At the second performance Obolensky performed the same service and it was while he was sitting holding Marjorie’s hand and cooing in her ear that the confrontation occurred.

Suddenly there was a tap on the door and in strode Tom. Smilingly phlegmatic as usual, he very possessively kissed me on the cheek and shook hands with Serge. Serge was beside himself. His eyes narrowed to two steely points of light. Spots of high colour glowed on his cheeks. That another man should visit me at a time he believed sacrosanct to him was outrage enough, but that the interloper should presume to kiss me … If Tom had any idea of the fire of resentment he set ablaze (and I am positive he did), he gave no hint. He did not even laugh, as I nearly did, when Serge made a sudden dramatic exit, but bade him good-bye with good-natured formality. He did it so perfectly I nearly kissed him there and then. Instead, I patted him on the shoulder, told him to wait and went on stage to finish the opera.

Marjorie and Tom’s romance now moved forward like whirlwind, but like a whirlwind it was turbulent and for a while highly unpredictable. Many times they went for long walks along Riverside Drive, rugged up against the cold, arm in arm and totally preoccupied with each other. On one of these walks Tom suddenly detached himself from Marjorie and threw himself onto his back in the snow, then proceeded to flail the snow with his outstretched arms. A bemused and slightly alarmed Marjorie didn’t recognise one of the favourite pastimes of American kids in winter. Tom was ‘making an angel’ and when he stood up there it was—the deep crisp outline of a tall angel with outstretched wings impressed into the fresh snow. From that day forward Marjorie called Tom her ‘Angel’. That affectionate name stuck for forty years and Tom reciprocated by calling Marjorie his ‘Angel’ and, as anyone who knew them later in life might testify, ‘angels’ flew about in alarming profusion whenever they conversed.

Marriage was proposed and accepted before either party gave thought to the practicalities of their union. Arguments then flared, mostly over one of the character traits Marjorie had first admired in Tom—his assertion that a husband must be ‘the boss’—and especially over money. Marjorie decided she would let her fiancée have his way on the first issue and act dutifully until after they were married, subsequently (as she admits in Interrupted Melody) showing him who was really boss. Marjorie’s candour about this suggests she planned to do this with consideration for Tom’s feelings, but there were no such considerations from either party when they argued over money. Tom had no income outside his medical practice and that was not large or very profitable. Marjorie on the other hand had declared an annual income for the previous year of just over $34,000—a vast sum at a time when the basic wage in the US was about $2000. Marjorie proudly told Tom that her income would allow him to give up the drudgery of his present life and share the luxury of hers. Tom exploded and insisted he was not giving up his career to become ‘Mr Lawrence’ or traipse around the country with her like a lapdog, and if that was a condition of their marriage, Marjorie would have to find another prospective husband. After one particularly acrimonious argument along these lines, Tom walked out on Marjorie.

I was dumbfounded. I wanted to shout to him to come back. But I could not. I just sat there, my hand over my mouth, unable to believe what had happened. I had offered this man everything I had and everything I was. And he, the stupid ungrateful fool, had walked out on me. No man had ever done that to me before. I was angry, hurt and humiliated.

During the ghastly week (Marjorie’s description) that followed, Marjorie heard nothing from Tom and she was so upset she made herself ill. This was the mystery malady that forced her to withdraw from Alceste and with hindsight it is possible to speculate that the turmoil in her private life was also a factor in her lack of success in that role.

A reconciliation was brokered by a mutual friend and Tom came back to the Ansonia bearing a modest bunch of flowers. Marjorie was desperately relieved to see him, but her pride was too damaged to allow her to let him off the hook too soon. She admonished him for walking out on her and as she was speaking he spied a bunch of long-stemmed roses on the table. Assuming—wrongly as it turned out—that they were from Serge Obolensky, Tom seized them and hurled them out of a window, where they fell on the heads of passers-by on Broadway. The pair argued until they were quite exhausted, finally collapsing tearfully into each other’s arms at midnight, with both agreeing that nothing mattered but their being together and that everything else could be sorted later.

And Marjorie wasn’t only arguing with Tom during this time. Cyril was aghast at the prospect of his sister rejecting a prince in favour of, as he put it, ‘a dollar chaser looking for a meal ticket’ and even more distraught to see his position as the main man in her life supplanted. In Interrupted Melody Marjorie claims that Cyril threatened to have Tom ‘bumped off’ if she didn’t give him up, but Cyril denied that to his dying day. Years later Tom put paid to Marjorie’s claim by saying it had been her way of getting back at Cyril for having made a pass at Tom himself.

Marjorie and Tom were married on 29 March 1941. Marjorie spent the previous two days in hiding (she says from Cyril, but more likely from the press) in a Brooklyn Heights hotel, although on the night before the wedding she was soloist in a concert with the New York Philharmonic. The ceremony was held in the historic Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn and conducted by the pastor, Dr Stanley Durkee, a friend of Tom’s. Before leaving the Ansonia, Marjorie had left a note for Cyril telling him where and when the ceremony was to take place and asking him to be there. Marjorie, Tom, Betty Bee, Henry Phohl and another friend of Tom’s, Bob Hilton, were all assembled on the steps of the church and the organist had struck up the Bridal March from Lohengrin when a taxi screeched to a halt and out leapt Cyril. Marjorie braced herself for a scene, but instead her brother embraced her, shook Tom’s hand and wished them both good luck and happiness.

After the ceremony the party emerged to find a crowd of journalists and photographers, tipped off by a publicity-keen church secretary. The photographs taken show Marjorie wearing one of her distinctive hats, clutching an armful of American Beauty roses and looking adoringly at her new husband. Tom looks equally smitten and we can see the tiny sprig of wattle someone had provided for him to wear as a buttonhole in tribute to Marjorie’s homeland.

During the service Tom had made a vow to love and care for Marjorie in sickness and in health. Although neither had any inkling of it as they strolled arm in arm back to the Brooklyn Hotel, where a small wedding breakfast awaited them, that vow would be severely tested in a very short time.