Mary McCormic

Mary McCormic (November 11, 1889[2] February 10, 1981) was an American operatic soprano and a professor of opera at the University of North Texas College of Music (1945–1960).

Mary McCormic
(from a 1922 publication)
Born
Mamie Harris

(1889-11-11)November 11, 1889
DiedFebruary 10, 1981(1981-02-10) (aged 91)
Alma materOuachita College
University of Arkansas
Northwestern University
OccupationOpera singer (lyric soprano)
Height5 ft 2 in (157 cm)[1]
Spouse(s)
  • Kenneth Joseph Rankin
    (m. 1908; div. 1916)
  • Chester Adrian Macormic
    (Undated, div.)
  • (m. 1931; div. 1933)
  • Homer V. Johannsen
    (m. 1936; div. 1937)
Children1

Career

For more than a decade (early 1920s to late 1930s), McCormic was among the most famous sopranos in the world. She was most known for her leading roles with the Paris National Opera, the Opéra-Comique (14 years), the Monte Carlo Opera, and the Chicago Civic Opera (10 years). She spent much of 1937 touring with the Kryl Symphony Orchestra.[3]

McCormic was born in Belleville, Arkansas. A onetime obscure Arkansas housewife, McCormic rose to stardom and enjoyed a colorful personal life four marriages and four divorces (men of no resemblance to one another), almost a fifth, a high-dollar lawsuit defense for assaulting an unauthorized female biographer, boom and bust personal wealth, witty humor, and brush with royalty. McCormic captured world intrigue with the panache of the operas she starred in, all with the backdrop of being born at the end of the Gilded Age, growing up as a teenager during World War I, flourishing as an opera superstar through the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, the Jazz Age, the Great Crash, and failing in her last two high-profile marriages in the throes of the Great Depression. She died, age 91, in Amarillo, Texas.

Chicago Opera Association

Mary McCormic from a 1921 publication.

Chicago Civic Opera

  • 1923 Referred to as "the Cowgirl Soprano" by The New York Times, McCormic and Charles Marshall sang the leading roles in the premiere of The Snow Bird, an American one-act opera.[4][5]

Paris Opera

  • July 24, 1926 McCormic was signally honored by receiving the title role for a special presentation of Romeo and Juliet with the Paris National Opera at the Paris Opera House in honor of Mulai Yusef, Sultan of Morocco.[6]

Opera Comique

Artistic management

Early life

Born in Belleville, and reared in Dardanelle, and Ola – all three in Yell County, Arkansas – McCormic, was known growing up as Mamie Harris. Mary McCormic was one of 4 born to:

  1. Odelle Crawford Harris (4 July 1886 in Belleville, Arkansas – 26 May 1950 in Amarillo, Texas)
  2. Thurman Harris (died young)
  3. Mamie Harris (11 November 1889 in Belleville, Arkansas – 10 February 1981 in Amarillo, Texas)
  4. Williard Harris (10 February 1892 in Yell County, Arkansas – 24 March 1949 in Amarillo, Texas)[13]
  5. Norborn Harris (c. 1898 – 10 February 1944 in San Francisco)[14]
  1. Johnnie Harris (a girl, died young)

Mamie's interest in becoming an opera star began at age nine, and continued while attending Ola High School of Ola, Arkansas. She, with her family, moved to Portales, New Mexico, in 1907, then to Amarillo, Texas in 1909.

Emil Frey Myers (1886–1957) gave McCormic's her first voice lessons in Amarillo. He was the conductor the Amarillo Civic Chorus and was a major concert promoter in the Texas Panhandle. Myers, with his wife, Lila, founded the Amarillo School of Music, Inc.

McCormic's father and two brothers, Odell and Williard, built a grocery store business "J H Harris & Sons" and "Harris Food Stores" and "Rolling Stone Stores" (as many as 10 stores located in Borger, Pampa, Dalhart and Amarillo). The business was sold in 1946, shortly before the death of the father. The father, Odell, and Williard also operated a 58,000-acre (230 km2) ranch in Union County, NM, 15 miles (24 km) north of Clayton. The father purchased the first portion of the ranch in 1915.

During a 1914 Tri-State Fair Music Festival in Amarillo, McCormic became aware of the operatic possibilities of her voice.[15] By way of a Methodist Choir in Chicago and a singing contest sponsored by Mary Garden, her operatic potential became known to others.[16]

College

Mary McCormic and Vittorio Trevisan, from a 1921 publication.

McCormic studied music at Ouachita College,[16] University of Arkansas and then, with the intention of becoming a lyric soprano, Northwestern University where she took vocal lessons.[17] McCormic became a protégé of Mary Garden (1874–1967). Both McCormic and Garden had been vocal students of the renowned voice teacher Mrs. Sarah Robinson-Duff (née Robinson; 1858–1934)[18]

Marriages

Kenneth Joseph
Rankin
Born January 27, 1886, Perryville, Arkansas;[19] died June 8, 1946, Sacramento; Joseph and Mary married around 1908 in Arkansas. During their marriage, they had a daughter:
  1. Reba McCormic, aka Alexandra Rebecca (Sandie) Goshie[20] (née Rankin; 16 February 1910 Ola, Arkansas – 23 January 2002 McLean, Virginia). Sandie was married to John Louis Goshie (1908–1974) a US Foreign Service Officer. Kenneth and Mary divorced in 1916 in Chicago.[21]
Chester
Adrian
Macormic
Born c. 1883, Saugus, Massachusetts; marriage ended in divorce Chester, a reputed Chicago mob lawyer, was Mary's "second husband." But Mary, in a Liberty magazine article, described the marriage as a "sham." The marriage occurred in secret in Kalamazoo. Chester later revealed that the marriage was not valid because it took place while both were married to others. Chester had married Ava (née?) in 1908. Mary began using the name "McCormic" after a Chicago Civic Opera employee misspelled Macomic.[22] The 1920 US Census records show them as being married. Chester died at the age of 64 on April 16, 1956, in Oak Park, Illinois.[23]
Prince Serge
M'Divani
Married April 27, 1931, Phoenix; divorced November 14, 1933, Los Angeles County[24]
Homer V.
Johannsen
Married November 25, 1936, Kansas City, Missouri; divorced July 14, 1937

Quotes on men and marriage

Gentlemen, meet Mr. McCormic

Mary M'Cormic 1936
Referring to her new husband, Homer V. Johannsen[25]

I abhor shooting animals, except vicious animals such as men

Mary M'Cormic 1936
Commenting on her love of deep sea fishing, upon the return of her father from a deer hunt[26]

That's the first time that I've used the word 'obey.'

Mary M'Cormic 1936
Referring to wedding vows in to Homer V. Johannsen[27]

I marry 'em; gosh, why can't you newspapermen count 'em?

Mary McCormic 1937
Anticipated Marriage No. 5 to Joseph Patrick Reilly[28]

Filmography

Teaching

In 1944, Wilfred Bain, dean of the University of North Texas College of Music, recruited Mary McCormic to create and direct an Opera Workshop. McCormic transformed herself from diva to artist-in-residence educator. She founded, defined, directed, and, when necessary, defended the school's first Opera Workshop. She built the Opera Workshop from scratch on a shoestring budget molding it over 16 prolific years into what has become her crowning legacy that, for 77 years, has enriched the Southwest. Wilfred Bain went down in history as one of the greatest music school deans of all time. In books and memoirs of accomplishments, Bain often tells of the hiring of Mary McCormic as one of this great accomplishments at North Texas.

The North Texas Opera Workshop was the first collegiate touring opera workshops west of the Mississippi and, at the time of its founding, was the only opera production company in existence in the Southwest. The San Antonio Grand Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera in the Heights and others were not yet in existence.

Through the opera workshop, McCormic pioneered an approach to opera in an era that wiped out major opera companies on the heels of the Great Depression. The new "low-cost workshop" model also offered new opportunities for composers who otherwise would never have their operas produced. And the workshop model gave hope for opera itself, when many in the world dismissed opera as a bygone luxury of the rich. The new "low cost model" also gave access in regions of the world that otherwise had little hope of having opera.

Under McCormic, the opera workshop performed locally, toured, and did broadcasts in radio and TV often with near quality of a reputable professional company.

When the Dallas Opera was founded in 1957, the UNT Opera Workshop and Vocal Studies provided a steady supply of singers for the Dallas Opera Chorus.

In 1966, McCormic retired and moved to Amarillo to make her home with her widowed sister-in-law, Mrs. Odell Harris.

The UNT Opera Workshop is an integral part of one of the most comprehensive music schools in the world; a school that, since the 1940s, has been among the largest in the country, and in recent years, holds the largest enrollment of any music institution accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.[29]

Directed by Mary McCormic

Mary Garden supervised the final ten-days of rehearsals[31]

Composition dedicated to McCormic

References

  1. "No 'K' For Kale In Her Name, But She Can Warble," New York Daily News, October 14, 1921, p. 20 (accessible via Newspapers.com at www.newspapers.com/image/410254921)
  2. DOB is from her grave marker; the DOD listed in the Social Security Death Index states November 12, 1895; the grave marker is consistent with archival records, namely the 1910 US Census, which, places her DOB around 1889-1890
  3. "Kryl Symphony Here December 15". Ellensburg Capital. December 3, 1937. p. 5.
  4. "Music Notes Afield," New York Times, January 7, 1923
  5. Edward Colman Moore (1877-1935) (Moore was a music critic for the Chicago Daily Journal), Forty Years of Opera, pps. 260-261, Horace Liveright (1930), republished by Arno Press, (1977)
  6. "McCormack (sic) as Juliet in Paris," New York Times, July 22, 1926
  7. "Mary McCormic Hailed," New York Times, July 24, 1929
  8. "Music in Paris," Time, August 1, 1927
  9. "After Singing Career, Mary McCormic Enjoys Home Life," Amarillo Globe-Times, February 10, 1966, pg. 33
  10. "Temperamental? Not Mary Mary McCormic But She's Still Opera's Glamar Gal," Mansfield News Journal (Ohio), January 20, 1938, pps. 1 & 6
  11. "Harris Services This Afternoon," Amarillo Daily News, November 11, 1946, pg. 8., col 2
  12. "Funeral for Mrs. Harris is Held Today," Amarillo Globe-Times, January 3, 1930, pg. 5., col 1
  13. "Willard Harris Dies at Age 57," Amarillo Daily News, March 25, 1949, pgs 1 & 15
  14. "Norbort Harris Dies in Railway Accident," Amarillo Globe-Times," February 14, 1944, pg. 3., col 2
  15. Texas, a Guide to the Lone Star State,, by Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Texas, Federal Writers' Project (1940), pg. 160
  16. Arkansas: A Guide to the State, pg. 364, WPA (1941), pps. 123, 213, 364
  17. "Mary McCormic to Sing at C.I.A. December 10," Denton Record-Chronicle, December 6, 1929
  18. "Letters from Musical Courier Readers – Mrs. Robinson-Duff Replies," Musical Courier, Vol. 85, No. 13, September 28, 1922, pg. 8
    In response to Vittorio Trevisan's (1868–1958) letter to the editor, "Musical Courier Readers," Musical Courier, Vol. 85, No. 4, July 27, 1922, pg. 49
  19. Biographical and Historical Memoirs (Central Arkansas), Goodspeed Publishing (1889); OCLC 947027926, 748379992, 866311520
  20. Girl on a Pony, by Laverne Hanners (1921–1998), University of Oklahoma Press (1998); OCLC 29259368
  21. "News of the Day Concerning Chicago," The Day Book, Vol. 6, No. 27, October 28, 1916 (accessible via Newspapers.com at www.newspapers.com/image/77854830)
  22. Basil Woon, "My Fake Marriage," Liberty (magazine), November 14, 1933
  23. "Obituaries," Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1956, Sec C, pg. 11
  24. "Prince is Divorced by Mary M'Cormic," New York Times, November 15, 1933
  25. New York Journal American, November 26, 1936
  26. Amarillo Daily News, November ?, 1936
  27. "Famous Singer Changes Tune: Uses 'Obey' in her Fourth Wedding Ceremony," San Antonio Light, November 26, 1936
  28. "I marry 'em, why can't you count 'em? singer asks?" Syracuse Herald Journal, October 27, 1939
  29. "HEADS Data – Special Report, 2009-10," National Association of Schools of Music (2019) (retrieved 2010)
  30. Denton Record-Chronicle, November 20, 1958, pg. 4, col. 6
  31. "Mary Garden to Supervise NTex Opera," Denton Record-Chronicle, December 22, 1950
Mary is buried at Llano Cemetery, Amarillo in section D, lot 6 space 1 (February 12, 1981). By her is:
Pat Harris, Section D lot 6 space 1A (February 22, 1993)
Mary Elizabeth Harris, Section D lot 6 space 2 (February 6, 1990)
Willard Harris, Section D lot 6 space 2 (March 26, 1949)
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.