by Laurel | January 8th, 2012
Miss Mabel Garrison
08 January 1919
Miss Mabel Garrison, Soprano of Metropolitan Opera Company, Pleases Audience
Miss Mabel Garrison, Soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York gave the second concert of this season at the Holyoke City Hall last evening under the joint auspices of the Chamber of Commerce, the music club of Holyoke and Mount Holyoke College.
Miss Garrison’s high rank among the young artists of this country and her lively coloratura singing are too well known through her several successful appearances in concert and festival in Holyoke to call for extended comment. It may be noted, however, that all the delicate beauty of her voice and fine distinction of style were delightfully apparent last night. A style and voice such as hers which depends for so much of its charm upon the gradations of tone and color inevitably loses a little in a very large hall, and the comparative smallness of last night’s auditorium, bringing singer and audience into intimate relation, added much to the delightful concert.
The singer was beautifully generous in the length of her program and happy in the choice of her selections, which ranged from interesting old English and French airs to examples of the most modern vocal art, and included folk music, simple and elaborate, as well as brilliant arias designed for the display of the florid style. In all these Miss Garrison was equally successful, giving great pleasure with songs of wildly differing types, such as Brown’s “Shepherd, the demeanor vary” and the scene and rondo by Isouard and “Mandeline” by Dupont, and “L’oiseau bleu” by Decreus, a particularly charming song, which was repeated to the delight of all.
Her program included the brilliant “Indian Bell Song” from Lakmé by Delibes, the striking “Hymn to the Sun” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Coq d’or,” one of the operas in which she has been winning very high praise this year, and “Vous dansez Marquise” by Lemaire, followed by “The Doll’s Song” from the “Tales of Hoffmann,” as an encore, unless memory fails.
Miss Garrison sang one group in English which proved very popular and included in its favorites an old Negro melody “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” and “Baby” written by her husband, George Siemonn, who was also her excellent accompanist. The concluding group was a number of beautiful folk songs, Russian, American, Scotch, Swedish and Norwegian. The last two being the same she sang so delightfully in Springfield, “When I was Seventeen” as sung by Jennie Lind and the echo song, “Kom Kjyza.”
Below is a MP3 of one of the songs Mabel Garrison sang in the concert, Vous dansez Marquise” by Lemaire.
Adapted from The Springfield Republican, image Creative Commons, public domain via Wikipedia, MP3 courtesy of the Library of Congress.
