Davis - Wotans daughter the life of Marjorie Lawrence

Wakefield Press

Wotans Daughter

Richard Davis is an internationally acclaimed writer specialising in biographies. Wotans DaughterThe Life of Marjorie Lawrence is the latest in a series devoted to the lives of famous Australian musicians. These have enjoyed international critical success and earned Richard the 2011 Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Award for the Arts. Richard is also the author of some lighter books including the popular The Ghost Guide to Australia . He also teaches creative writing and his Creative Writing Weekend Workshops are justly famous throughout the eastern states.

This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of

Sheila Prior, AM, BEM, DLJ

19142004

Sheila Prior devoted her life to working in an honorary capacity for various community organisations and for the arts. During a thirty-two-year tenure as Founding President and Chairperson of the Australian Opera Auditions Committee Inc., Sheila was instrumental in raising more than two million dollars. These funds were used to support talented Australian singers, conductors and instrumentalists.

Nothing is impossible, nothing hopeless if you have courage and faith in God. Dont ever lose your sense of humour. If you can keep laughing you are safe. I have walked hand in hand with God. He has given me strength. It has made every impossible thing, possible.

Marjorie Lawrence

Contents

Foreword

I first heard the glorious voice of Marjorie Lawrence just before my fourteenth birthday in September 1944 in Sydney. I can still hear her incomparable sound in Didos Lament as if it were yesterday. Five years later Joan and I adored her Sydney concertsshe gave at least six in June and July 1949.

Her sublime final scene from Gtterdmmerung , her O don fatale, her Divinits du Styx remain with me forever. If only I had heard her Valentine in Les Huguenots at the Opra in Paris in 1936!

She came to La Scala in 1966 to see Joan as Donna Anna and we spent a memorable evening after the opera. We later had the indescribable pleasure of being in the same concert together for the United Nations in New York in 1976. Marjorie sang Waltzing Matilda from her wheelchair and the entire audience was in tears. How privileged we were to share even a tiny part in her life.

In our opinion the voice of Marjorie Lawrence was the only Wagnerian comparable to Kirsten Flagstad and certainly one of the three greatest ever to come from Australia.

Bravo to Richard Davis for the long-awaited biography, which restores a great singer to her rightful place in operatic history.

Joan Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE Richard Bonynge, AC, CBE

Preface

On 20 April 1955 the world premiere of one of the few successful opera films to come out of Hollywood was given in Melbourne, Australia. Within days the film was released across Australia, then the United States and Great Britain. It received rave reviews wherever it was shown. Audiences flocked to see it and the film netted millions of dollars for Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

The film was called Interrupted Melody and was based on a best-selling book of the same name. It told the story of an Australian country girl named Marjorie Lawrence who rose to become one of the worlds great opera singers before being struck down by a crippling disease. Audiences reached for their handkerchiefs as they watched the films glamorous star, Eleanor Parker, fight pain, disability and depression to get back on her feetmetaphorically and physicallyand to return to the opera stage, aided and abetted by Glenn Ford, playing the heroines devoted husband. The film combined rags to riches, romance, glamour, tragedy, courage and ultimately triumph, along with good acting and the best representation on screen up to that time of opera staging and opera singing.

The question therefore arises: why, with a successful book and a successful film chronicling Marjorie Lawrences life, is a modern biography needed? A number of sound reasons answer this question, the most obvious being that Marjorie had another thirty years of active life after the book was published.

Secondly, the book Interrupted Melody was ghost-written for Marjorie as her autobiography, with all the information it contains supplied by her and not independently verified by the ghost writer. By comparison with the autobiographies of most prima donnas, Interrupted Melody is delightfully candid, but when the book was written Marjorie was still active as a singer and therefore selective about what she revealed, omitting or underplaying anything that might have been harmful to her career. Marjorie also took a great deal of poetic licence in reporting certain events, especially those of her early years, and in some cases the ghost writer (expert though he was) embroidered them further.

Thirdly, although modesty was not a particularly conspicuous trait in Marjories character (it is rare among prima donnas), she is modest about her own accomplishments in Interrupted Melody . Nowhere in the book will the reader find the kind of objective analysis of her voice and her singing necessary to fully appreciate her art. Nor will the reader find comparison between Marjorie and other Wagnerian sopranos, also necessary if she is to be accorded her rightful place among them.

The film of Interrupted Melody takes enormous liberties with the already dubious content of the book, and admirable though it may be as cinema, if we relied upon it for our understanding of Marjorie Lawrence we would end up with a much distorted view.

Another compelling reason is that Marjorie Lawrence is one of those musicians of the past who is ripe for re-evaluation. Apart from vintage record collectors, Wagner historians, a small claque of her devoted former students and the fading memories of some very elderly opera goers, she is largely forgottena fate she does not deserve. There is plenty of convincing evidence in the form of personal recollections, contemporary criticism and sound recordings to prove beyond doubt that she is worthy of much wider recognition and a place among the greatest Wagner singers of all time.