Biographical
Mary Garden was born February 20th, 1877, in Aberdeen, Scotland. She came to America with her parents when she was eight years of age and was brought up in Chicopee, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, and Chicago, Illinois. She studied the violin when she was six and the piano when she was twelve. It was the ambition of her parents to make her an instrumental performer. She studied voice with Mrs. S. R. Duff, who in time took her to Paris and placed her under the instruction of Trabadello and Lucien Fugére. Her operatic début was made in Charpentier's Louise at the Opera Comique in 1900. Her success was immediate both as an actress and as a singer. She was chosen by Debussy and others for especially intricate rôles. She created the rôle of Melisande; also, Fiammette in Laroux's La Reine Fiammette. In 1907 she made her American début in Thaïs at the Manhattan Opera House in New York City. Later she accepted leading rôles with the Philadelphia-Chicago Opera Co. She is considered by many the finest singing actress living—her histrionic gifts being in every way equal to her vocal gifts. In 1921 she was made the manager of the Chicago Opera Company.