Although born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1874, Mary Garden was taken to the U.S.A. as a young child. Her singing studies started in Chicago with Mrs. Robinson Duff and continued later in Paris with Sbriglia, Trabadelo, and Marchesiand Fugère. She was engaged by the Paris Opéra-Comique and made her début in the title rôle of Charpentier's Louise in 1900.
Her success as Massenet's Manon in Paris, and at Covent Garden, persuaded that composer to write Cherubin for her, and she created the title rôle in 1905. Earlier, in 1902, Debussy chose her to create the rôle of Melisande in his Pélleas et Mélisande. She had success wherever she sang - in the U.S.A. in New York and Chicago, at Covent Garden and Brussels. In reality she had a lyric voice but with the directness and clarity of her production she had success in many spinto parts.
In the late 1930s she was engaged to advise on the operatic sequences in several Hollywood films. She returned to Scotland to live from 1939. After the Second World War she continued to make lecture tours. She died in 1967.
