Mme. Florence Easton was born at Middleborough, Yorkshire, England, Oct. 25, 1887. At a very early age she was taken to Toronto, Canada, by her parents, who were both accomplished singers. She was given a musical training in youth with the view of making her a concert pianist. Her teacher was J. A. D. Tripp, and at the age of eleven she appeared in concert. Her vocal talents were discovered and she was sent to the Royal Academy at London, England, where her teachers were Reddy and Mme. Agnes Larkom, a pupil of Garcia. She then went to Paris and studied under Eliot Haslam, an English teacher resident in the French metropolis. She then took small parts in the well-known English Opera organization, the Moody-Manners Company, acquiring a large repertoire in English. With her husband, Francis Maclennen, she came to America to take the leading rôles in the Savage production of Parsifal, remaining to sing the next season in Madama Butterfly. The couple were then engaged to sing for six years at the Berlin Royal Opera and became wonderfully successful. After three years at Hamburg and two years with the Chicago Opera Company she was engaged for dramatic rôles at the Metropolitan, and has become a great favorite.
THE OPEN DOOR TO OPERA
MME. FLORENCE EASTON
What is the open door to opera in America? Is there an open door, and if not, how can one be made? Who may go through that door and what are the terms of admission? These are questions which thousands of young American opera aspirants are asking just now.
The prospect of singing at a great opera house is so alluring and the reward in money is often so great that students center their attentions upon the grand prize and are willing to take a chance of winning, even though they know that only one in a very few may succeed and then often at bitter sacrifice.
The question is a most interesting one to me, as I think that I know what the open door to opera in this country might be—what it may be if enough patriotic Americans could be found to cut through the hard walls of materialism, conventionalism and indifference. It lies through the small opera company—the only real and great school which the opera singer of the future can have.
The School of Prime Donne
In European countries there are innumerable small companies capable of giving good opera which the people enjoy quite as thoroughly as the metropolitan audiences of the world enjoy the opera which commands the best singers of the times. For years these small opera companies have been the training schools of the great singers. Not to have gone through such a school was as damaging an admission as that of not having gone through a college would be to a college professor applying for a new position. Lilli Lehmann, Schumann-Heink, Ruffo, Campanini, Jenny Lind, Patti, all are graduates of these schools of practice.