The soprano who sang fabulously off pitch.

Release today of a DVD retracing the life and the career of the hilarious American, Florence Foster Jenkins.

By Eric Dehan

English Translation by Paul Micio

Thursday, August 28, 2008
DVD : Florence Foster Jenkins, A World Of Her Own (Vai/Codaex).

One reaction.

Anyone who has not suffered a recital of a would-be soprano, hitting sour notes at a charity dinner, has no idea what it means to have fits of laughter. These aspiring artists, whose dreams of the sublime are dashed against the tuning fork, have a spiritual mother: Florence Foster Jenkins, who entered the annals of history on October 25, 1944. At 76 years of age, she who had imposed herself as a "personality" on New York's musical scene, in heading several musical societies and in creating her own Verdi Club, decided to make a great splash by renting Carnegie Hall with her own money in order to give a concert which would, at last, prove to any last skeptics that she was the greatest voice of her time. That evening, all around this prestigious Manhattan concert hall, it was a free-for-all: 2,000 people could not get tickets. Inside, within seconds, the 3,000 spectators could not believe their ears. The live performance of this recital, splattered with a mix of howls of laughter and applause, has become part of cult CDs of people, like David Bowie, who already drew our attention to this recording a long while ago.

The announcement at the beginning of summer regarding of the production of a DVD retracing the career of Florence Foster Jenkins could only thrill the fans of this personality who lived In Her Own World, which is the title of this documentary that was released today. Composed of still images, musical extracts and off-the-record anecdotes, this film is a successful evocation. The fact that there are not any moving images of the famous recital only makes it more of an illusion, for it was indescribable according to the eyewitnesses interviewed who remembered still have sore ribs two days later from laughing so hard.

Born in 1868 to a rich Pennsylvania family that was Republican and Protestant, Nascita Foster Jenkins was a virtuoso pianist who performed before the public from the time she was eight and, shortly after that, at the White House. It was because of an injury to her arm during adolescence that she opted for singing. Her life is a real novel. When her father died, she left for New York with her mother where she had Carmen, Faust and Rigoletto performed at the Plaza Hotel in English, complete with costumes and scenery. The great balls she organized, like The Roses, Breakfast and the annual dance, as well as the tableaux vivants of which she was always the main attraction, made up as Madame du Barry or a Wagnerian heroine, caused a sensation in high society, even if certain people observed that, in real life, in spite of all of her efforts, she looked more like the Queen of Spades.

More than allowing a new generation to discover her numerous studio recordings, including the exquisite massacre to Mozart's aria for the Queen of the Night, Donald Collup's film scintillates with details of her romances, the syphilis that made her bald and the obscure or scathing criticism that damaged her reputation. Five days after her "triumph" at Carnegie Hall, Jenkins suffered a heart attack. She declared, "Some will say that I do not know how to sing, but no one will be able to say that I did not sing." A month later, she was dead.