By Stephen Temperley Directed by Steve Scott NOVEMBER 12, 2009 - DECEMBER 20, 2009 “Hilarious!  Delightfully pitch-imperfect.” – Broadway.com You'll fall in love with the “Tone-deaf Diva” in this uproarious and musical story inspired by Florence Foster Jenkins: a New York socialite whose tin ear couldn’t keep her off the stage at Carnegie Hall.  As seen through the eyes of her beloved accompanist, Souvenir is a touching and comic tribute to Ms. Jenkins' sincerity, ambition, deep love of music and complete lack of talent, all of which brought a unique joy to thousands.   Get your tickets today for the hottest comedy in Chicago!

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Scroll down for:

• Links to Florence Foster Jenkins song samples
• NPR's "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" Florence Foster Jenkins quiz
• "Florence Nightingale," a biography of Lady Florence
• Interview with Cosme McMoon, Florence's real-life accompanist
• Carnegie Hall program

 

 

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Hear Florence Foster Jenkins sing!

Thanks to sites like YouTube, you can hear Lady Florence's "unique" vocal stylings for yourself.

Listen to:

"Der Holle Rache"  (Mozart's "Queen of the Night" aria)

"Adele's Laughing Song" (from "Die Fledermaus" by Strauss)

 

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Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

NBC News Anchor Brian Williams joins "Wait Wait" at New York City's Carnegie Hall to play a game called "You are the very worst act ever to play this stage": three questions about music legend Florence Foster Jenkins.  Listen Here> (Hint, the quiz starts at about 9:30 minutes in)

 

 

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Florence Nightingale:

Brooks Peters tells the story of the legendary Florence Foster Jenkins, a soprano without peer

 

Brooks Peters is a freelance writer based in New York. He first heard Florence Foster Jenkins on NPR and thought his radio signal had been taken over by a ham operator or an alien from outer space.

In the pantheon of unforgettable divas, there never has been a soprano to rival the legendary Florence Foster Jenkins. She stands alone, a true rara avis -- especially when she appeared onstage sporting a pair of gigantic angel-wings strapped to her back. At the height of her popularity in the 1940s, Lady Florence -- as she liked to be called and invariably signed her publicity stills -- was compared to Frank Sinatra for the contagious effect she had on audiences. High society stepped out in droves, bedecked in evening attire, jewels and furs -- and paying top dollar -- to hear her warble. Cole Porter composed a song for her and never missed a concert. Beatrice Lillie was an ardent fan. Thomas Beecham played her albums on British radio as examples of his favorite recordings. Fashion aficionados gasped at the extraordinary gowns she designed for herself and wore at the invitation-only soirées she gave in the grand ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Early on, Caruso was an enthusiastic friend. Lily Pons is said to have shed tears after hearing her sing.

 

For those poor unfortunates who have never heard of her, or sadly, never heard her, these accolades must seem perplexing. If such a superstar existed a mere half-century ago, why isn't she better-known today? Perhaps it's because the key to Madame Jenkins's everlasting allure is the overwhelming fact that she was perfectly awful. To put it bluntly, she couldn't sing at all. Well, that isn't really fair, since she definitely sang, and quite often, year after year, for decades, cooing with abandon for her ever-growing circle of sycophantic devotees. The issue is more precisely, why did she choose to sing? Ira Siff, of La Gran Scena Opera Company, which ingeniously skirts the nether regions between parody and performance art, dubs her "the anti-Callas." "Jenkins was exquisitely bad," he says -- "so bad that it added up to quite a good evening of theater, which is a major achievement unto itself. 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. It was infinite -- bless her." Like many budding opera buffs, Siff spent hours during his youth playing Jenkins's records. "I would collapse onto the floor and dissolve into laughter. 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. And yet, think of all the mediocrity in the world. Florence was one of a kind. She was way off the mark. But she was not mediocre."

 

To describe her voice, one must rely on metaphor, since adjectives do not exist to capture its inherent je ne sais quoi. Imagine the shrill caw of an aging turkey buzzard. Or the wail of a wounded wolverine caught in a trap. Or the caterwaulings of Citizen Kane's hapless protégée, Susan Alexander. Even to the untrained ear, Florence Foster Jenkins sounds peculiar. A critic in the 1940s likened the kick one got listening to her albums to that of smoking pot. In the '60s, she was considered psychedelic; people dropped acid while playing her pieces with headphones on. Her coloratura, if analyzed electronically via sound waves, would look like the hemidemisemiquaverings of an incriminating lie-detector test. Her notorious high F, the lucky result, she confessed, of being jostled in a taxi during a traffic accident, was as faint as a dog whistle; but not even the most devoted mutt, his ear cocked to a Victrola, could have warmed to it as "his master's voice."

 

For all her flaws, Florence Foster Jenkins was immensely popular. A crowd of 2,000 unlucky ticket-seekers had to be turned away from her 1944 debut at Carnegie Hall. Today, her original 78s, recorded at Melotone, a little-known vanity studio, are highly cherished collectors' items. The two classic LPs, A Florence! Foster!! Jenkins!!! Recital!!!! and The Glory (????) of the Human Voice, released after her death, are increasingly hard to locate. But unlike many songbirds of yore, Jenkins can be found on CD, as fresh and astonishing as ever.

 

Did Florence Foster Jenkins truly believe she had talent? It's a question that may never be answered. "Florence didn't think she was pulling anyone's leg," says Albert Innaurato, playwright and opera-lore expert. "She was compos mentis, not a lunatic. She was a very proper, complex individual.... It was a different era, when there was still a distinction drawn between high- and lowbrow art. Florence represented the last gasp of that world."

 

She was born Florence Foster in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, sometime around 1868. Her father, Charles Dorrance Foster, was a banker and member of the Pennsylvania legislature who instilled in his daughter a passionate respect for music. Providing her with piano lessons, he discovered she was a child prodigy. At the age of eight, she gave a recital in Philadelphia. By the time she was seventeen, she yearned to study music overseas and make the grand tour. Her father, disapproving, refused to sponsor her. It was a background similar to that of the hopelessly plain debutante in the Henry James novel Washington Square. Perhaps to spite her father, Florence soon ran off with a doctor named Frank Thornton Jenkins. They quickly married and settled in Philadelphia. By 1902, however, they were divorced. Unable to rely on her father, Florence scraped by, giving music lessons and playing piano at ladies' luncheons. But in 1909 her father died, leaving her his fortune. At last she was free to move to New York and make a name for herself.

 

Florence Foster Jenkins began her curious artistic odyssey by becoming the chairman of music at the Euterpe Club, a gathering of dilettantes and connoisseurs. At one of its evenings at the Waldorf-Astoria, she met a dashing, if somewhat ghoulish, English actor named St. Clair Bayfield, who became her consort and confidant, and by his own account, her lover. Sixteen years her junior, he'd had a modicum of success as an actor but had an earlier checkered career as a sailor, a soldier and a sheep- and cattle-rancher in New Zealand. "We were never married in the conventional way," he confided to a journalist. "She told me that if she ever married again, it would be a common-law marriage. She was very superstitious about it." He claimed they lived together at his apartment on West Thirty-seventh Street for the next thirty-six years, although Florence maintained a suite at the Hotel Seymour, where she gave interviews and presented a less bohemian front. In 1912, Florence founded the Verdi Club, an ambitious endeavor that sponsored musicales of the composer's work. It cost her $2,000 a year, but it was her ticket to the inner sanctum of Knickerbocker society.

 

It's not clear when the prospective diva first took up singing, but she studied voice with Carlo Edwards, a maestro at the Metropolitan Opera. Soon Florence was giving recitals in Newport, Washington, Boston and Saratoga, the elite spots at the time. In 1928, at the Barbizon Club, she was introduced to Edwin McArthur, a gifted musician and later accompanist to Kirsten Flagstad. Florence engaged him as her pianist for the next six years, but she ultimately fired him for guffawing during one of her numbers. McArthur was succeeded by Cosme McMoon, a stylish pianist and composer, who set her sonnets to music and managed somehow to keep a straight face.

 

At first, Florence contented herself with organizing small recitals at the St. Regis, the Sherry-Netherland or the Ritz-Carlton hotels. As word of her unusual act spread across Manhattan, as many as 800 fans packed the salons to hear her. No tune was too difficult to add to her arsenal: "Vissi d'arte," Lakmé's bell song, enchanting melodies by Ivor Novello, cantatas by Bach. In 1937, at the Ritz, she made a splash by essaying Zerbinetta's notoriously difficult coloratura aria from Ariadne. It was only the second time the aria had been heard in New York, noted one of her bemused reviewers, giving the impression that it wouldn't be done again any time soon -- at least not by her. She earned enthusiastic applause for her spirited rendition of Adele's laughing song "Mein Herr Marquis" from Die Fledermaus, although the number usually had her listeners stuffing handkerchiefs into their mouths to keep from responding in kind. Perhaps her signature number was the Queen of the Night's treacherously pyrotechnic aria ("Der Hölle Rache"), which she tossed off with customary abandon. As one critic noted, "Mme. Jenkins gave her interpretative abilities full and untrammeled sway."

 

Her star turns were equally notable for their jaw-dropping costumes. She would appear garbed as a Greuze shepherdess, a Mexican señorita, or draped lavishly in an eighteenth-century white silk hoopskirt and tiara, looking like a cross between Marie Antoinette and Margaret Dumont. She invariably capped her outfit with an outrageous hat, or twirled a parasol, or fanned herself with giant ostrich plumes. Sometimes her efforts would exhaust her. At the end of one concert, Florence asked her audience to forgive her for not singing an encore, but she was too tired. She requested instead that they send her letters telling her which songs they liked best. "It may not be important to you," she insisted, "but it is very important to me. Next week, I am singing in Ithaca."

 

So, in 1944, it came as little surprise to her fans that Florence -- who claimed to be in her sixties but was closer to seventy-six -- should attempt to scale the highest of heights: Carnegie Hall. (She rented the space.) Broadway veteran Cris Alexander, who photographed the Patrick Dennis classics Little Me and First Lady, attended her debut. "Yes, I was there. I went with Gian Carlo Menotti, who was a great fan of hers," he recalls. "She really was divine. Heavenly. It was one of the funniest nights in the theater. For one number, she came out with a large salad bowl filled with rose petals that she scattered onto the floor. After the song was over she got down on her honkers, scooped them all up and did the entire number over again. It was one of the highlights of my entire theatrical life. Right up there with Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie."
Alix B. Williamson, who was the press agent for Richard Tucker and the Von Trapp family, was also in the audience that momentous evening. "I went to several of her concerts," she recalls. "It was unbelievable, let's put it that way. Jenkins had no voice of any kind. She was a large, big-busted lady. Everyone would laugh out loud when she sang. She would go to change her costumes and say to the audience, 'Now don't go away.'" Then she would reappear in her "Angel of Inspiration" costume or come out trilling "Like a Bird" (a song by Cosme McMoon).

 

But was Madame Jenkins serious? "I had a friend who knew her," Williamson says, "and he thought she was very sincere. She took him aside once and said, 'I really like you, so I'm going to sing for you privately.' She wasn't spoofing anything. I imagine that she was tone-deaf. The more people laughed, the happier she was. I'll tell you a funny story. One day I was meeting with Eugene Ormandy. He wanted to do a concert version of a Strauss opera, but he needed a coloratura soprano. So I said kiddingly, 'Do you know Florence Foster Jenkins? She might be ideal for that purpose.' He'd never heard of her. So I took him up to my place at the Essex House and put on her record. I sat there deadpan. He was deadpan, too. I could see him start to squirm. He didn't know my taste or what to do. I went out of the room, because I just had to laugh. I finally came back in and said, 'You can laugh now, too.' He almost killed me."

 

There are those who believe that the unusually harsh reaction Florence endured during and after her recital at Carnegie Hall was the blow that killed her. Her friend Francis Robinson, who was assistant manager at the Met and penned the liner notes to her first album, vehemently denied this, claiming she went to her grave with a "happy heart." Yet there's no denying that the barbs flung at her after her debut hit home. Perhaps because it was Carnegie Hall, with 3,000 paying attendees, critics didn't pull punches. Earl Wilson ridiculed her, complaining of "dizziness, a headache and a ringing in the ears." She suffered a heart attack a few weeks later and never recovered. She died on November 26, with her trusted squire, St. Clair Bayfield, by her side.
Bayfield, prey to all kinds of superstitions, had cautioned her against performing that one last evening. "I opposed the concert at Carnegie Hall," he told an interviewer after her death, during a protracted will contest in which he sued her heirs -- fifteen of her second cousins -- for his share of her estate. "I didn't think a person of her age should take on that strain. There is something in a vast audience that draws the magnetism out of a person. It sucks you dry. My wife would be alive today if she'd stuck to her regular Ritz concert." And what did he think of Florence's singing? "She had perfect rhythm," he noted. "Her interpretation was good, her languages wonderful. She had ... star quality.... You could feel that in the applause. People may have laughed at her singing, but the applause was real. She was a natural-born musician. But the instrument.... There was very little instrument."
Perhaps Florence herself put it best. "Some may say that I couldn't sing," she admitted toward the end of her life. "But no one can say that I didn't sing."

OPERA NEWS, June 2001 Copyright © 2001 The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc. Photo courtesy of Roger Gross, Ltd.

 

 

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Interview with Cosme McMoon (Florence Foster Jenkins' accompanist)

 

Transcript of radio interview originally on: KALW: 5/26/91 / Weekend Radio, WCLV, 26501 Emery Industrial Parkway, Cleveland OH 44128

Q. Like many artists of unusual ability, Florence Foster Jenkins has been understood by the world and even by her most devoted followers in a partial, limited sort of way. What is needed for a full appreciation of numbers such as we hear today is not only background of a sort but a clear explanation of her personality by someone both familiar and sympathetic with its unusual development. It is for this reason that we are fortunate in being able to interview Mr. Cosmé McMoon, who coached Mme Jenkins and accompanied her on these records. Toward getting as complete a picture as possible, Mr. McMoon, would you be willing to tell our listeners something about Mme J's history prior to her belated concert career?

 

A. I think I could. Mme Jenkins was born in Wilkes-Barre PA around 1868, of very wealthy parents, but very early she demonstrated this desire to sing, and her parents objected to the excruciating quality of her voice, and in her early teens she ran away from home and went to Philadelphia to try to make her way. There she suffered great hardships and privations until her father, hearing of it, came down to town and took her back home. She was restored to her social and wealthy position, but with the proviso that she wouldn't sing anymore. Therefore, during the whole lifetime of her father, she did not sing but she had this terrific repression. Finally, when he died, he left her very well provided for and her mother was a little more lenient than her father had been, so she was allowed to take singing lessons again, but not to sing in public. And her mother died in 1928, and
at that time she was left this additional fortune and completely free to pursue her own way, so that is when she decided to make her concert career. At that time she must have been about sixty years old.

 

Q. Did anyone encourage her in this idea of taking up a singing career seriously? Who were the people that were instrumental in this?

 

A. Well, she had sung at small affairs in her big musical club, which was called The Birdy Club. They had a ball yearly, and in the last few years she had created an intermission in the ball during which she sang an aria, and so great was the enthusiasm and the mirth that people clamored for more. She was encouraged to sing more and more, both by professionals and laymen. There were a great many singers from the Metropolitan in this club - I think Enrico Caruso was one of the founders - and all these
people, to kid her along, told her that she was the most wonderful singer that ever lived, and encouraged her that way.

 

Q. Through which of these activities, Mr. McMoon, did you first come to know Mme J?

 

A. I met Mme Jenkins socially about a year before her mother's death, and I saw her socially every once in a while, and, knowing that I was a concert pianist, she asked me, when she decided upon her first concert, if I would coach her program and supervise the numbers, which I did.

 

Q. Before we go on to any further description of Mme J's career, I think it would be appropriate if you could tell us, right now, some of the most memorable numbers that she performed, describing perhaps the costumes she was known for and her stage presence in general.

 

A. Well, I might say that every number was memorable, the way she performed it, because it was not only a performance of this sort that we hear on the records, but she added histrionics to every number, generally acting the action, if it were an aria, or other appropriate action if it were a descriptive song, or else she would go into different dances during these numbers, which were extremely hilarious. I might say that I think her most unusual number was a fast Spanish song by the name of Clavelitos.
During this, she insisted on having introductory music, to which she danced a Spanish step in the style of a fandango. She came out dressed in a high comb and mantilla, with a gorgeous Spanish shawl and carrying a basket of carnations. During the actual singing of the number, she would pause altogether and toss these flowers out into the audience, with shouts of ¡Olé! And this created such a pandemonium at the end that she was forced to repeat it always. Then of course she had thrown the flowers out, so she asked the audience if they would return them so she could toss them out again, and many brought them up to the stage, others threw them up. When the basket was refilled, she started again, only this time they accompanied the whole thing with hand-clapping and each toss of a flower, for instance at Carnegie Hall, was accompanied by a great salvo of "¡Olé!" from the whole house of several thousand people. There were many other unusual numbers, each one in its own costume and action.

 

Q. In what way was the audience able to contain itself, or to maintain some semblance of approval during all this, Mr. McMoon?

 

A. Why, there wasn't any question of semblance of approval, because they approved of it wholeheartedly, but the audience nearly always tried not to hurt her feelings by outright laughing, so they developed a convention that whenever she came to a particularly excruciating discord or something like that, where they had to laugh, they burst into these salvos of applause and whistles and the noise was so great that they could laugh at liberty.

 

Q. Perhaps what's even more important, how did Mme Jenkins herself rationalize these performances? How was she able to interpret this audience reaction as encouragement?

 

A. She had gotten a conception that is because, at that time, Frank Sinatra had started to sing, and the teenagers used to faint during his notes and scream, so she thought she was producing the same kind of an effect, and when these salvos of applause came, she took them as great marks of approval of some tremendous vocal tour de force, and she loved that. She would pause altogether and bow, many times, and then resume the song.

 

Q. At this time, she was led to draw comparisons, wasn't she, between herself and other serious divas of the opera stage.

 

A. Oh, yes! Naturally she must have made comparisons, but I do think that she could not hear her own work in the proper pitch, and that's one of the characteristics of her singing. Now, I know sometimes she had At Homes, with different guests, and she would put two records on the Victrola to have a voting upon which was the better. She would put The Bell Song by herself and by Galli-Curci, and then she would hand little ballots out and you were supposed to vote which one was the best. Of course they all voted for her, and one woman once voted for Galli-Curci so Mme said, "How could you mistake that! My tones are much fuller than that!" So she really didn't hear the atrocious pitches in these things. She used to sit delightedly and listen for hours to her recordings."

 

Q. I know a lot in the public's mind has been made of the appearance of the great final appearance she made at Carnegie Hall. Would you be willing to recount some of the unique characteristics or some of the especially interesting things that happened during that performance?

 

A. Yes, her performance in Carnegie Hall was the most remarkable thing that has happened there, I think. I was supposed to play for her that night, and when I approached the hall I could hardly get near it, because the crowd stretched all the way to the Little Carnegie and around Seventh Avenue, and you hardly mill through them. You had to prove your identity to
get in, and inside the house held a record audience. It seemed that the people were hanging on the rafters, besides taking up every inch of available standing room. When she came out to sing an old English group, she came out in a sort of shepherdess's gown with a shepherd's crook, holding it, and the ruckus was so great that it lasted five minutes before there was enough quiet for her to begin. Then the concert went on with the most noisy and abandoned applause that I have - I have never seen such a
scene, either a bullfight or at the Yale Bowl after a winning touchdown. When she sang Clavelitos, one famous actress had to be carried out of her box because she became hysterical.

 

Q. During the years since Mme J's death, there have been many attempts, have there not, to imitate her, on the part of other singers less - less qualified, or less completely sincere, as she was, about that type of vocal art?

 

A. Oh, yes. Such a golden shower as the audiences which she was able to attract are certainly a temptation to anyone, and many have tried since to give studiedly discordant recitals at Town Hall and different places, or trying to make the music funny that way, but they have no success at all, and they just make a dismal evening, and the reason is that they're not sincere in their efforts, as Mme Jenkins was. She is inimitable, and many have tried also to imitate her, but without success.

 

 

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Copy of the original program from Mme Jenkins' infamous Carnegie Hall Concert

 

Cast (in alphabetical order)

Mark Anders (Cosme McMoon) is very happy to return to Northlight, where he last appeared in the Jefferson Award-winning A Marvelous Party, a revue of Noël Coward's words and music, which he also co-devised, and in which he has played in several other venues. He has also performed in several (not to say too many) productions of 2 Pianos, 4 Hands around the country. Other recent work includes roles in Murderers and Noises Off at the Seattle Repertory Theatre; The Woman in Black, Souvenir and Dirty Blonde at ACT Seattle; Irma Vep and Gross Indecency at Intiman Theatre; and Jeffrey Hatcher's Hanging Lord Haw-Haw at the Empty Space. His best contribution to the world is his daughter, Gemma.

 

 

 

Neva Rae Powers (Florence Foster Jenkins) is pleased to be making her Northlight debut playing one of her favorite roles. Ms. Powers appeared in the Broadway productions of King of Hearts, Peter Pan, Barnum, and Can-Can, as well as numerous roles off-Broadway. European credits include Bernstein's Mass (Berlin), Jedermann (Salzburg Festival), Song of Broadway (Vienna's English Theatre), and The Bartered Bride (Chamber Opera of Vienna). Recent US credits include Little Women (National Tour), Big/Little Edie in Grey Gardens (Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, CEA recipient), Other People's Money (John W Engeman Theatre, NYC), and A Christmas Carol (Syracuse Stage). Ms. Powers has appeared in Souvenir at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati (CEA and Acclaim Award), American Stage Theatre (St. Petersburg) and Vienna's English Theatre (European premiere). She is the only actress to play "Flo" in both Temperley's Souvenir and Peter Quilter's adaptation of her life: Glorious (Fulton Theatre, PA). Ms. Powers' concert stage appearances include New York, London and Vienna, and she has directed and/or choreographed over 40 musicals and revues in Budapest, Vienna, Stuttgart, and the US.

 

Production

Steve Scott (Director) is the Associate Producer of the Goodman Theatre, where he has overseen over 150 productions; he is also a member of the Goodman's Artistic Collective. He has directed at a wide variety of Chicago theaters, including the Goodman, Shattered Globe, Silk Road, Next, Porchlight, Theatre Wit, Theatre at the Center, Organic Touchstone, Lifeline, Redtwist, and Eclipse, where he is a company member. He is a faculty member of Act One Studio and the Theatre Conservatory at the College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt University, and has served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs. He is an artistic associate of About Face, Collaboraction and Chicago Dramatists, and serves on the board of Season of Concern. Mr. Scott has received five Jeff nominations, an After Dark Award, and the Award of Honor from the Illinois Theatre Association.

 

Tom Burch (Set Design) is thrilled to return to Northlight following Mauritius, The Lady with All the Answers, Bad Dates, Red Herring and The Good War. Other Chicago credits: Gas For Less, Talking Pictures (Goodman); Mistakes Were Made (A Red Orchid); The Hairy Ape and Frankenstein (Hypocrites); The Overwhelming (Next); A Steady Rain (Chicago Dramatists and Royal George); as well as shows for About Face, ATC, Apple Tree, Chicago Shakespeare, House, Pegasus Players, Timeline, Lifeline, greasy joan, and a number of others. Regional work includes shows for Arizona Theatre Co., Peninsula Players, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Cleveland Playhouse and others. He is the recipient of 3 After Dark Awards (including one for Northlight's Red Herring), a Jeff Citation (and another nomination), and the Michael Maggio Emerging Designer Award. He teaches at University of Chicago, and his work can be seen online at www.tomburch.com.

 

Theresa Ham (Costume Design) is a Chicago-based Costume Designer and this is her first design with Northlight Theatre. Chicago credits include The Wild Party, Side Show, The Life, Edward II, Yerma, Songs for a New World, and The Glorious Ones (Bohemian Theatre Ensemble); Proof, Urinetown, Little Shop of Horrors, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (Stage Wright at Wilbur Wright College); Le Nozzi de Figaro and Don Giovanni (The Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera Chicago); and Hansel and Gretel (DePaul Opera Theatre). Her work has also been seen at Drury Lane Oakbrook, Porchlight Music Theatre, Sullivan Little Theatre, and First Folio Shakespeare Theatre. She received a Joseph Jefferson Citation Nomination for her costume design of Side Show in 2006. Upcoming projects include Die Fledermaus with DePaul Opera Theatre and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee with Stage Wright. She lives in Beverly with her loving and wonderfully supportive family.

 

Lee Fiskness (Lighting Design) is excited to work with Northlight for the first time. He just received his MFA from Northwestern University where he designed the lighting for Peter Pan, Sweeney Todd, The Boys From Syracuse, Amadeus, and The Consul. He recently designed End Days with Next Theatre, The Flowers with About Face Theatre, Soultime: At the Apollo with Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and was the Associate Lighting Designer for Cosi Fan Tutti with Opera Colorado. For the past 9 years Lee has worked at The Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico as a Lighting Supervisor.

 

Victoria DeIorio (Sound Design) is happy to be back at Northlight after designing Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and Blue/Orange. Off-Broadway: The Bluest Eye (Steppenwolf at The Duke Theatre) and Ophelia (NYC Fringe Festival). As associate designer, off-Broadway: Boy and Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams (Primary Stages), God of Hell (Actor's Studio Theatre), Luminescence Dating (Ensemble Studio Theatre) and Live Girls (Urban Stages). National Tour: Private Lives (LA Theatre Works). Productions with: The Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Victory Gardens Theatre, Chautauqua Theatre Company, Indiana Repertory, Milwaukee Shakespeare, Milwaukee Rep, Geva Theatre, Writers' Theatre, and many other theatres in and around Chicago, NY, and LA. Victoria is an Artistic Associate of The Next Theatre, a founding member of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, and a member of Lifeline Theatre. She has been nominated for 9 and has received 5 Joseph Jefferson Awards, as well as 2 After Dark Awards. She is the head of Sound Design for The Theatre School at DePaul University.

 

Laura D. Glenn (Production Stage Manager) Northlight credits include production stage management for Better Late, The Retreat from Moscow, Permanent Collection, Cat Feet, Blue/Orange, Mitch Albom's ‘Tuesday's with Morrie', Sky Girls, Rounding Third and A Skull in Connemara, all with her good friend BJ Jones. Other credits include: Up, Superior Donuts, Betrayal, Love Song, I Never Sang for my Father, The Violet Hour, Purple Heart, The Drawer Boy and many others at Steppenwolf Theatre over the past twenty years. International credits include Better Late (Northlight), Orange Flower Water and Purple Heart (Steppenwolf) -Galway Arts Festival, Ireland; The Man Who Came to Dinner - BITE Festival, Barbican Center, London; and the regional and Broadway productions of Buried Child.

 

Stephen Temperley (Playwright) Born in London he first came to the U.S. as a teenager. After training as an actor in New York he appeared in several plays for the Public Theatre before returning to the U.K. There he performed in the West End, on TV and in repertory. Since returning to the U.S. he has worked extensively in regional theatres, in stock, on Broadway (the original company of Crazy for You) and off (Up Against It at the Public). The first of his plays to be produced was Beside the Seaside at the Hudson Guild. The plays that followed include Money/Mercy at the Chelsea Theatre Center (Mercy was later seen at the first HBO new writers workshop in L.A), Dance with Me, first seen at the 18th Street Theatre and then at Centenary Stage. Other plays include The Weight of Tears and The Pilgrim Papers which made its debut at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in 2006. His most recent work includes Kind Masters, an account of the English actress Fanny Kemble's visit to Georgia, and Foxtrot, a musical on the career of the notorious forger van Meegeren.

 

Temperley's Souvenir was first produced by the York Theatre in New York before going on to the Berkshire Theatre Festival and Broadway. It has since then become one of the most produced plays in the US and is currently running in Argentina, Germany and Switzerland, Australia, Denmark and Sweden; with productions planned for France, Spain and Japan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All photos by Michael Brosilow.

Photo Gallery

Click on any image to start the slideshow  

Fall in love with the “Tone-deaf Diva” in this uproarious and musical true story of a New York socialite whose tin ear couldn't keep her off the stage at Carnegie Hall.  Souvenir is a touching and comic tribute to one woman’s deep love of music and complete lack of talent.

Souvenir - Scene 1

News and Reviews

A Northlight ‘Souvenir' of the talentless star who made it to Carnegie Hall
★★★1/2

 

Chicago Tribune
November 23, 2009
by CHRIS JONES

 

Florence Foster Jenkins was a New York socialite and singer who parlayed her career from salons at the Ritz-Carlton to a sold-out solo engagement at New York's Carnegie Hall. Jenkins designed her own costumes and had an ambitiously operatic repertoire that included works by Brahms, Mozart and Strauss. She was untroubled, and, indeed, unimpeded in the trajectory of her career, by one notable artistic deficit.

 

She could not sing a note.

 

There are some history lessons in Stephen Temperley's play "Souvenir," currently in its Chicago-area premiere at the Northlight Theatre, for those of a certain age who rail against Paris, Nicole, Jessica and those other skill-free, modern-day creatures of the tabloids. You could be famous without talent in 1944, too.

 

Especially if you were rich.

 

The idea of rich people buying their way into art is just one of the many interesting themes in Temperley's small but pleasingly complex biographical play, which appeared on Broadway in 2005 and is very solidly directed at Northlight by Steve Scott. Anybody who has ever oscillated around any branch of the arts is familiar with the creatively clueless figure whose self-ennobling whims are endlessly indulged on the grounds that he or she is signing the checks. Given the perennial impecunity of the arts, American branch, trained and talented artists are frequently the desperate beneficiaries of such deposits and thus they shut up, make a living and introduce themselves to the world of self-loathing.

 

I've seen it happen countless times in Chicago. And it's good to see a play that, well, calls out the vanity project.

 

As richly, truthfully and amusingly played in Skokie by Neva Rae Powers, Jenkins is, of course, a figure of comedy. Part of the many pleasures of this two-character play-which focuses on the relationship between Jenkins and her knowing accompanist, Cosme McMoon, floridly played by Mark Anders-is hearing Powers hit all of those excruciatingly wrong notes. It is very funny. And thankfully, Temperley was also smart enough to give McMoon, the failed composer at the keyboard, a few leavening ditties as respites from the comedic assaults on the ear. Anders plays and sings them well.

 

But to the credit of this deceptively complicated piece, Jenkins is not just presented as a figure of fun. Temperley also probes such fascinating matters as how singers really never hear what everyone else hears, and thus they don't really know how they sound. They all take things on trust. More interesting yet, the piece also explores the question as to whether such little things as correct notes, pitch and rhythm really matter as much as the guardians of culture say they do. If you can move people without them-maybe move people more because you don't have them-then who needs them?

 

The rise of figures like Sarah Palin and the stars of TV talent shows suggest that surety, force of personality and the nurturing of empathy can be far more effective, maybe far more valid, than technical preparation in the cultural arena. Jenkins touched people's lives enormously, even if most of them were laughing. So what's wrong with that? Heck, you're reading a whole piece about her, even though most of her technically superior peers have vanished into dust.

 

This is a delicate piece mostly handled well on the Northlight stage (Powers catches the right earnest tone, beautifully). At times, Anders, Scott and the script all go a little more for the punched-out laugh than necessary. Jenkins is already smart, sad and funny.

 

The show is at its best when McMoon is staring into the dark recesses of his own hypocrisies, even if he was just bringing a genuine star and her deserving public together.

 

See the review chicagotribune.com>

 

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'Souvenir' deftly stays right on key

 

Chicago Sun-Times
November 24, 2009
by HEDY WEISS

 

Consult the Wikipedia entry for Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) and you will find this blunt assessment: "An American soprano who became famous for her complete lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, and overall singing ability."

 

All that might be perfectly true. Yet it gives no hint of Jenkins' startlingly irrepressible character, or of the unexpected dimensions of her unique "career." For that you must head to "Souvenir," Steven Temperley's bittersweet and surprisingly deep two-character play-with-music, now in a most winning Northlight Theatre production directed by Steve Scott.

 

I confess that the idea of spending two hours listening to someone painfully botch the opera repertoire with her bellowing and bleating gave me pause. But while the vocals in this show are beyond laughable, they are just the means to the end of telling the moving tale of two intriguingly intertwined lives -- those of Jenkins (played by Neva Rae Powers, a fine singer who expertly manages to sound dreadful, but who might have aged more visibly in the second act), as well as her piano accompanist, Cosme McMoon (Mark Anders, a fleet pianist and deliciously droll actor).

 

Jenkins was born into a wealthy Pennsylvania family but had her dreams of studying music thwarted by her father. She was past 40 when she inherited enough money to assure a lavish independence, moved to New York and began giving recitals for charity in a hotel ballroom. A cult following grew.

 

Her voice? Let's just say (charitably) that her whole existence was a triumph of intention over reality.

 

What gives Temperley's play its wonderful edge is Cosme's deft commentary on the interplay of these two unlikely cohorts.

 

Spinning the story of their relationship in retrospect, Cosme explains how he, too, came to New York -- a young composer struggling to pay the rent. He accepted a well-paying gig he thought would be short-lived and under-the-radar, but it turned out to be life-changing as for years he provided impeccable musical accompaniment for a woman who seemed blithely unaware of how dreadful her singing was, or, if she knew, simply believed that art was simply what you imagined it to be in all its glory.

 

Cosme's affection for Jenkins (fabulously costumed here by Theresa Ham), and his utter bewilderment at the phenomenon she became, are not entirely dissimilar from what audiences felt, even those at the crowning "achievement" of her career, a 1944 concert at Carnegie Hall that sent audiences into paroxysms of laughter. Though Jenkins might never have been in on the joke, she just might have had the last laugh after all.

 

See the review on suntimes.com>

 

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PREVIEW
'Souvenir' amazing story of soprano who could not sing

 

Pioneer Press
November 19, 2009
By DONALD LIEBENSON Contributor

 

It's important right off that we establish Neva Rae Powers' music credentials. Powers, who is starring in "Souvenir," the Tony-nominated musical that will kick off Northlight Theatre's 35th anniversary season Nov. 22, has appeared in four Broadway musicals, the national touring company of "Little Women," and many regional productions. She was a theatre and voice major at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Impressive on paper, but at the behest of her interviewer, she graciously obliges with an impromptu rendition of Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are," which will never be erased from his recorder.

 

So, yes, Powers can sing, and sing beautifully.  Continue reading on pioneerlocal.com>

 

 

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PREVIEW
Florence Foster Jenkins: She played Carnegie Hall and she really couldn't sing a note?
The true story behind "Souvenir"

 

Chicago Tribune
November 20, 2009
By DOUG GEORGE Tribune Reporter

 

That's right. Decades before William Hung on "American Idol," there was the musical career of soprano Florence Foster Jenkins -- which culminated in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall in New York on Oct. 25, 1944.

 

History agrees, with hands held over its ears, that she couldn't sing for sour apples. Jenkins' nickname, behind her back, was "The Tone-Deaf Diva," or "The Terror of the High C's."  Continue reading on chicagotribune.com>