Florence Foster Jenkins

Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–November 26, 1944) American soprano famous for her complete lack of singing ability. Born Florence Foster in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Jenkins received music lessons as a child, and expressed a desire to go abroad to study music. Her father refused, so she eloped to Philadelphia with Dr. Frank Thornton Jenkins; her father then disowned her. Jenkins was divorced in 1902 and earned a living as a teacher and pianist. An injury forced her to give up thoughts of a career as a concert pianist, and upon her father's death in 1909, she inherited an income that allowed her to take up singing as a replacement for the piano career that had been discouraged by her father and husband. Her father?s will stipulated that her income would cease if she ever remarried, and she never did, but later she did have a live-in lover, the minor actor Saint Clair Bayfield.

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1868 - November 26 - 1944

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She became involved in the social life of New York City where she and her mother moved, appearing as an actress in tableaux-vivants at club functions. Many of these also involved musical interludes by professionals, and at a certain point Jenkins realized she too could appear at these functions as a singer. She founded the Verdi Club, and regularly importuned friends and acquaintances to help pay for the club?s musical performances, but strangely never appeared in one herself (or funded any of the presentations.) Jenkins apparently enjoyed disporting herself in public while wearing outlandish costumes in the tableaux , and her hilarious attempts at dancing and historical impersonation later became part of her musical performances at other venues. She took singing lessons with Henriette Wakefield, a minor singer from the Metropolitan Opera, and began to give recitals at other clubs, her first in 1912. By the 1930?s she was appearing regularly in club venues in New York, Newport, Washington and elsewhere.

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In 1941 she recorded some vanity records for the Melotone label, and these have made her immortal.

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From her recordings, it is apparent that Jenkins had little sense of pitch and rhythm and was barely capable of sustaining a note. Her accompanist can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes. Nonetheless, she became tremendously popular in her unconventional way. Her audiences apparently loved the amusement she provided, with her embarrassing costumes and her ?action? accompanying her singing, rather than for any musical excellence. Critics most often described her appearances in a backhanded way that may have served to pique public curiosity.

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Despite her patent lack of ability, Jenkins was firmly convinced of her own greatness. She compared herself favorably to the renowned sopranos Amelita Galli-Curci and Luisa Tetrazzini, and dismissed the laughter which often came from the audience during her performances as the work of her rivals, whom she believed were consumed by "professional jealousy". She may have been right, for she had a formidable rival in another well-to-do clubwoman named Tryphosa Bates-Batcheller. Jenkins was aware of her critics, and was quoted saying "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing."

Related Topics:
Amelita Galli-Curci - Luisa Tetrazzini - Tryphosa Bates-Batcheller

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Jenkins? repertoire was vast, ranging from Bach?s St. Matthew Passion through Richard Strauss? Ariadne auf Naxos to sentimental ballads and waltz songs, and colorful Spanish and Russian genre pieces, all well beyond her technical ability. She always wore elaborate costumes that she designed herself, once appearing in wings and tinsel, the photograph of which has become famous. For performances of the Spanish song "Clavelitos", she threw carnations from a basket into the audience while fluttering a fan and sporting more flowers in her hair. Her accompanist Cosme McMoon was forced to go into the audience to retrieve the flowers at recitals when she sang this number, so she could encore the performance.

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Attendance of her recitals was always limited to her loyal clubwomen and any others who could fit into the hotel ballrooms - she handled distribution of the coveted tickets herself. At the age of 76, Jenkins finally achieved a dream and performed at Carnegie Hall on October 25, 1944. So anticipated was the performance that tickets for the event sold out weeks in advance. Jenkins died a month later.

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There have been claims that Jenkins' entire 32-year career was an elaborate joke on the public, which seems to contradict another claim that her death was a result of depression caused by the derisive reviews she received for her Carnegie recital. There is some evidence for the latter claim, and none for the former. Recently several plays have been written with Jenkins as the main character, all fictionalized accounts that sometimes rely on sentimental interpretations of the truth. A new play about the life of Ms Jenkins written by Peter Quilter will run at Birmingham Repertory Theatre from 2 to 17 Sep 2005 with Maureen Lipman in the lead role. Souvenir, a play by Stephen Temperley with music, starring Tony award winner Judy Kaye as Ms. Jenkins and David Corren as Cosme McMoon, is slated for Broadway in Nov. 2005.

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One author has written that Florence Foster Jenkins ?died with the same happy, confident sense of fulfillment that pervaded her entire artistic life,? but that uplifting thought is misleading at best, for historical evidence indicates Jenkins was a monster of vanity rather than a loveable innocent. Factual information about Jenkins' life can only be found in the booklet notes for the compact disc ?The Muse Surmounted,? (Homophone 1001), which presents her rarest recording, along with recordings and information about eleven other bad singers of Jenkins? ilk. The bulk of Jenkins? recordings are available on at least five compact discs in the U.S.A. and Germany on the Naxos, B.M.G., Russell and other labels.

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