IRCC 3028 10? Manon (Henri Meilhac; Philippe Gille; Jules Massenet): Obéissons quand leur voix appelle - "Gavotte"
Namara, Marguerite - soprano; Levitzki, Mischa - piano  #137
Test; 1919; Transcribed; Autographed;
Brunswick: Not released
IRCC 3028 10? Oh! Si les fleurs avaient des yeux (Buchillot; Jules Massenet)
Namara, Marguerite - soprano; Levitzki, Mischa - piano  #137
Test; 1919; Transcribed;
Brunswick: Not released
 

autgraphed by Margaret Namara  in white ink, previously unpublished 1919 Brunswick test pressings.
IRCC 10" 78 rpm record


Condition:

UNPLAYED, PRISTINE plays very quiet

A CHOICE COPY

Marguerite Namara (born Marguerite Evelyn Cecilia Banks; November 19, 1888 – November 5, 1974) was a classically trained American lyric soprano whose varied career included serious opera, Broadway musicals, film and theater roles, and vocal recitals, and who counted among her lifelong circle of friends and acquaintances many of the leading artistic figures of the first half of the twentieth century.[1

Childhood
She was born as Marguerite Evelyn Cecilia Banks in Cleveland, Ohio, to a wealthy family with New England ties (she was descended on her father's side from Mayflower passengers John Alden and Priscilla Mullens and was a great-grandniece of Union General Nathaniel Prentice Banks, Governor of Massachusetts and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives).

Raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, she attended St. Vincent's School and Girls' Collegiate High School, studying piano and voice from an early age. As a teenager, she and her mother, who served as one of her early vocal coaches, made a recording for Thomas Edison, singing the Flower Duet from the Delibes opera, Lakmé.

Early operatic career

Namara during the early part of her career.

Namara in 1922.
At 18, Marguerite began studying at the Milan Conservatory, debuting a year later in 1908 as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust at the Teatro Politeamo in Genoa. She fashioned her stage name of Namara from her mother's maiden name, McNamara. From then on, she was referred to professionally as Madame Namara, and was called by family and friends as, simply, Namara. From 1910 to 1926, she sang with the Boston Opera Company, with the Chicago Opera Company (succeeding Mary Garden in Thaïs), with the Metropolitan Opera, and with Paris's Opéra-Comique. She sang lead roles in Cavalleria Rusticana, Manon, Carmen, Il trovatore, Tosca, La traviata and La bohème.

She also starred in operetta and musical comedy: Her 1915 Broadway debut came in a Franz Lehár operetta written especially for her entitled Alone at Last. She later starred for the Shuberts in revivals of H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado, and for the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company in Carmen. In addition, she regularly toured nationally and in Europe with leading orchestras.

She appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, London on five occasions between 1921 and 1925.[1]

Circle of friends
Close friend of Isadora Duncan, pupil of Jean de Reszke, Manuel de Falla, and Nellie Melba, the circle in which she moved included such interesting figures of the early twentieth century as Enrico Caruso, Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Debussy, Auguste Rodin, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dos Passos, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Eleonora Duse, Amelita Galli-Curci, Marguerite d'Alvarez, Leopold Stokowski, Arturo Toscanini, Mischa Levitzki, Carl Van Vechten, Fania Marinoff, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Ed Wynn, Ivor Novello, Noël Coward, Elsa Maxwell, Maurice Chevalier, Mae Murray and Pola Negri and their husbands, the soi-disant Princes David and Serge Mdivani, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and P. G. Wodehouse, the latter four being collaborators of her second husband Guy Bolton. During her years in Paris in the 1920s, she also studied painting with Claude Monet. Her letters to family at home indicated the lessons came in return for her singing to him.[citation needed]

A 1926 letter written from France by F. Scott Fitzgerald noted that "Nobody was in Antibes that summer ...except me, Zelda, the Valentinos, the Murphys, Mistinguett, Rex Ingram, Dos Passos, Alice Terry, the MacLeishes, Charlie Brackett, Maud Kahn (daughter of philanthropist Otto Kahn; wife of Major-General Sir John Marriott), Esther Murphy (sister of Gerald; wife of John Strachey), Marguerite Namara, E. Oppenheimer (sic), Mannes the violinist, Floyd Dell, Max and Crystal Eastman, ex-premier Orlando, Etienne de Beaumont ... Just the right place to rough it, an escape from the world."[2][3]

Filmography
Stolen Moments, a 1920 silent picture in which she starred with Rudolph Valentino, was one of her few film projects, and it included a small part for her infant daughter Peggy as well. In 1932, she starred in the first musical film version of Carmen, a British Film Company picture given the unfortunate name of Gipsy Blood (sometimes billed as Gypsy Blood but usually referred to by Namara as "The Bloody Gypsy"). Her co-star was British actor Lester Matthews. Exteriors were filmed in Ronda, Spain, but the troupe recorded the music in London with the London Symphony Orchestra. Later films in which Namara played small parts included Thirty-Day Princess (1934) with Cary Grant and Sylvia Sidney, and Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Gary Cooper and Ann Harding.

Later career
In the early 1930s, her singing voice strained from overwork, she appeared in the London cast of the Ivor Novello play, Party which opened in London on 23 May 1932. With the onset of the Depression, she returned to Hollywood and began teaching voice, counting the actors Ramón Novarro and Frances Drake among her pupils. Subsequent theatrical performances on Broadway and on tour included supporting parts in Enter Madame, Night of Love, Claudia, and Lo and Behold. During the 1940s/50s, her voice mellowed to that of a mezzo-soprano and she enjoyed modest success on the concert recital circuit, singing occasionally on radio. On tour, many of her costumes were designed by her friend and patroness, heiress Natalie Hays Hammond, daughter of the real adventurer who discovered King Solomon's Mines.

Marriages
She was married three times: from 1910-1916 to her manager Frederick H. Toye (1887–1930), with whom she had a son, Frederick Namara Toye (1913–2005); from 1917-1926 to the playwright Guy Bolton (1884–1979), with whom she had a daughter, Marguerite Pamela "Peggy" Bolton (1916–2003) (the names Peggy and Pamela were chosen to honor the baby's godfather P. G. Wodehouse, whose first name was Pelham); and from 1937 until her death, to landscape architect Georg Hoy (1899–1983).

Later life
In the 1940s and 50s, she divided her time between New York City and Europe. In the early 1960s, she and her third husband retired to a secluded ranch house on several acres in California's Carmel Valley, where she painted prolifically and recorded her last album in 1968, the year she turned 80. She died on November 5, 1974, in Marbella, Spain, two weeks shy of her 86th birthday. In addition to her two children, she was survived by two grandchildren, Elizabeth Namara Toye Williams and Frederick D. Toye, and by five great-grandchildren, Laurel Baker Tew, Robert Baker, Victoria Toye, Frederick Eugen Otto Toye, and Christopher Baker.

de Castro, Consuelo Escobar, soprano, * 1895 San Luis Potosí (Mexico), † (?); She studied in Mexico City and made her debut at the local opera house in 1916 as Gilda in the Rigoletto. Since 1920, she has had great success at the Ravinia Summer Opera near Chicago, where she has been called Lucia di Lammermoor, Adina in Elisir d'amore, Norina in Don Pasquale, Rosina in the Barber of Seville, and Philine in "Mignon" by A. Thomas. In 1923-24 she traveled through North America with the San Carlo Opera Company. For several seasons, she was engaged at the Mexico City Opera, where she was particularly popular with audiences. In Italy she performed at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. Later she founded a vocal studio in Mexico City. She was married to the Mexican tenor Carlos de Castro Padilla (* 1889 Mexico City, † 1938 Mexico City). This had in Italy, u.a. with Arturo Pessina, studied and made his debut in Mexico City in 1915 as Duke in »Rigoletto«. He then put together his own opera troupe, which also Consuelo Escobar de Castro belonged to, he married. Since 1926 he worked as a teacher at the Conservatory of the Mexican capital. He was also employed in the diplomatic service of his country. - A sister of singer Maria Escobar was a well-known dramatic soprano, and her daughter Maria de Castro Escobar had a significant career in the soprano subject.

The exquisite beauty of her coloratura soprano can be heard on Edison records, which came out in 1919-23; under it are some duets with Carlos de Castro. Most of her records contain Mexican and Spanish songs, but there are also some opera titles below.