Florence Foster Jenkins (born Narcissa Florence Foster; July 19, 1868 – November 26, 1944) was an American socialite and amateur soprano who became known and mocked for her flamboyant performance costumes and notably poor singing ability. Stephen Pile, in his book The Book of Heroic Failures ranked her "the world's worst opera singer... No one, before or since, has succeeded in liberating themselves quite so completely from the shackles of musical notation."
Despite – or perhaps because of – her technical incompetence, she became a prominent musical camp cult figure in New York City during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Cole Porter, Gian Carlo Menotti, Lily Pons, Sir Thomas Beecham, and other celebrities were among her fans."Florence Foster Jenkins". . American National Biography Online. Retrieved October 18, 2016."Celebrity fan club: the stars who loved the world's worst singer". . The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved September 20, 2016. Enrico Caruso reportedly "regarded her with affection and respect."Dixon, Daniel (December 1957). "Florence Foster Jenkins The Diva of Din". Coronet. Via MaxBass.com. Retrieved August 17, 2024.
The poet William Meredith wrote that a Jenkins recital "was never exactly an aesthetic experience, or only to the degree that an early Christian among the lions provided aesthetic experience; it was chiefly immolatory, and Madame Jenkins was always eaten, in the end."
Personal life and early career Narcissa Florence Foster was born July 19, 1868, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Charles Dorrance Foster, an attorney and scion of a wealthy land-owning Pennsylvania family,Skrapits, Elizabeth (December 24, 2014). "Opera singer's family owned land". . The Citizens' Voice. Retrieved March 28, 2015. and Mary Jane Hoagland Foster.Wepman, Dennis (February 2000). "Jenkins, Florence Foster". . American National Biography. Retrieved August 17, 2024. Her only sibling, a younger sister named Lillian, died of diphtheria in 1883 at age eight.
Foster said her interest in public performance began when she was seven years old.Collup, D: Florence Foster Jenkins: A World of Her Own. DVD, Video Artists Int'l (2007). A pianist, she performed at society functions as "Little Miss Foster", and gave a recital at the White House during the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes. She attended the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania from September 1881 to March 1882, where she was among 20 students in the "Fourth Room". In December, Foster performed "Two Merry Alpine Maids", a "gay duet, with yodel and la la passages", as part of the annual Christmas service. In a little under a year at the Bethlehem Female Seminary, she paid over $100 for music instruction and sheet music (equivalent to almost $3,000 in 2023 dollars). Foster’s interest in music was further evidenced by her purchase of hymnals.
After graduating from high school, her hopes of studying music in Europe were dashed when her father refused permission and funding. On July 11, 1883, ten days after the funeral of her sister and eight days before her 15th birthday, Foster married Dr. Francis "Frank" Thornton Jenkins (1852–1917), a physician 16 years her senior, in Philadelphia. (In the 1880s, the age of consent for marriage in Pennsylvania was ten.) The following year, after learning that she had contracted syphilis from her husband, she ended their relationship and reportedly never spoke of him again. Years later, she claimed to have been granted a divorce decree on March 24, 1902, although no documentation of any such ruling has been found. She retained the Jenkins surname for the remainder of her life.
After an arm injury ended her aspirations as a pianist, Jenkins gave piano lessons at her apartment in Philadelphia, The Newport, built in 1897. Around 1900, she moved with her mother to New York City.
In 1909, in her early forties, Jenkins met a 33-year-old British actor named St. Clair Bayfield (1875–1967); they began a vaguely defined cohabitation relationship that continued the rest of her life.Peters, Brooks (June 15, 2006). "Florence, The Nightingale?". (also appeared, but in slightly different format, in Opera News) 65 (12): 20–23 Upon her father's death later that year, Jenkins became the beneficiary of a sizable trust, and resolved to resume her musical career as a singer with Bayfield as her manager. She began taking voice lessons and immersed herself in wealthy New York City society, joining dozens of social clubs. As the "chairman of music" for many of these organizations, she began producing lavish tableaux vivants, popular diversions in upper-crust social circles of that era. In each of these productions, Jenkins would cast herself as the main character in the final tableau, wearing an elaborate costume of her own design. In a widely republished photograph, Jenkins poses in a costume, complete with angelic wings, from her tableau inspired by Howard Chandler Christy's painting Stephen Foster and the Angel of Inspiration.
Jenkins began giving private vocal recitals in 1912 when she was 44 years old. In 1917, she became founder and President Soprano Hostess of her own social organization, the Verdi Club. Its membership quickly swelled to over 400; honorary members included Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar. When Jenkins's mother died in 1930, additional financial resources became available for the expansion and promotion of her singing career.Otto, Julie Helen "Ancestry of Florence Foster Jenkins". . wargs.com. Retrieved August 17, 2024.
Vocal career
According to published reviews and other contemporary accounts, Jenkins's proficiency at the piano did not translate well to her singing. She is described as having great difficulty with such basic vocal skills as pitch, rhythm, and sustaining notes and phrases. In recordings, her accompanist Cosmé McMoon can be heard making adjustments to compensate for her constant tempo variations and rhythmic mistakes,Piano ma non solo, Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Anagramme Ed., 2012, pp. 140–141; . but there was little he could do to conceal her inaccurate intonation. She was consistently flat, sometimes considerably so. Her diction was similarly substandard, particularly with foreign-language lyrics.
The difficult operatic arias that Jenkins chose to perform—all well beyond her technical ability and vocal range—served only to emphasize these deficiencies. "There's no way to even pedagogically discuss it," said vocal instructor Bill Schuman. "It's amazing that she's even attempting to sing that music." The opera impresario , who dubbed her "the anti-Callas", said, "Jenkins was exquisitely bad, so bad that it added up to quite a good evening of theater ... She would stray from the original music, and do insightful and instinctual things with her voice, but in a terribly distorted way. There was no end to the horribleness ... They say Cole Porter had to bang his cane into his foot in order not to laugh out loud when she sang. She was that bad." Nevertheless, Porter rarely missed a recital.
The question of whether "Lady Florence"—as she liked to be called, and often signed her autographs—was in on the joke, or honestly believed she had vocal talent, remains a matter of debate. On the one hand, she compared herself favorably with renowned sopranos Frieda Hempel and Luisa Tetrazzini, and seemed oblivious to the abundant audience laughter during her performances. Her loyal friends endeavored to disguise the laughter with cheers and applause; they often described her technique to curious inquirers in "intentionally ambiguous" terms. For example, "her singing at its finest suggests the untrammeled swoop of some great bird". Favorable articles and bland reviews, published in specialty music publications such as The Musical Courier, were most likely written by her friends or herself. "I would say that she maybe didn't know [how badly she sang]," said mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne. "We can't hear ourselves as others hear us." Nerve damage due to syphilis and its treatment (see below) may have physically compromised her hearing as well.
On the other hand, Jenkins refused to open her performances to the general public, and was clearly aware of her detractors. "People may say I can't sing," she once remarked to a friend, "but no one can ever say I didn't sing." She dismissed her original accompanist, Edwin McArthur, after catching him giving her audience "a knowing smile" during a performance. She went to great lengths to control access to her private recitals, which took place at her apartment, in small clubs, and each December at the Verdi Club's annual "Ball of the Silver Skylarks" in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel's Grand Ballroom. Attendance, by personal invitation only, was restricted to her loyal clubwomen and a select few others. Jenkins handled distribution of the coveted tickets herself, carefully excluding strangers, particularly music critics. "There's no way she could not have known," said Schuman. "No one is that unaware ... she loved the audience reaction and she loved singing. But she knew."Huizenga, Tom (August 10, 2016). "Killing Me Sharply With Her Song: The Improbable Story Of Florence Foster Jenkins". . NPR. Retrieved October 25, 2016.
Despite her careful efforts to insulate her singing from public exposure, a majority of critics favored the view that Jenkins's self-delusion was genuine. "At that time Frank Sinatra had started to sing, and the teenagers used to faint during his notes and scream," McMoon told an interviewer. "So she thought she was producing the same kind of an effect." "Florence didn't think she was pulling anyone's leg," said opera historian Albert Innaurato. "She was compos mentis, not a lunatic. She was a very proper, complex individual." As an anonymous obituary writer later put it, "Her ears, schooled in constant introversion, heard only the radiant tones which never issued forth to quell the mirth of her audiences."
Her recitals featured arias from the standard operatic repertoire by Mozart, Verdi, and Johann Strauss; lieder by Brahms; Valverde's Spanish waltz "Clavelitos" ("Little Carnations"); and songs composed by herself and McMoon. As in her tableaux, she complemented her performances with elaborate costumes of her own design, often involving wings, tinsel, and flowers. She would perform "Clavelitos" dressed as Carmen, complete with castanets and a wicker basket of flowers, clicking the castanets and tossing the flowers one by one. When she ran out of flowers, she flung the basket too—and then the castanets. Her fans, aware that "Clavelitos" was her favorite song, would usually demand an encore, prompting her to send McMoon into the audience to retrieve flowers, basket, and castanets so that she could sing the number again.
Once when a taxi in which she was riding collided with another car, Jenkins let out a high-pitched scream. Upon arriving home, she went immediately to her piano and confirmed (at least to herself) that the note she had screamed was the fabled F above high C, a pitch she had never before been able to reach. Overjoyed, she refused to press charges against either involved party, and even sent the taxi driver a box of expensive cigars. McMoon said neither he "nor anyone else" ever heard her actually sing a high F, however.