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.
29-426: Namara is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Marguerite Namara (1888–1974), American actress and singer Stephen Namara (born 1953), American artist See also [ edit ] Namara inscription MacNamara [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with the surname Namara . If an internal link intending to refer to
58-801: 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. A 1926 letter written from France by F. Scott Fitzgerald noted that "Nobody
87-463: A Hungarian woman from a family of German descent. He grew up speaking only Hungarian until the age of 12. He later put an acute accent above the a of his father's surname Lehar to indicate the pronunciation of the vowel as / aː / , in accordance with Hungarian orthography . While his younger brother Anton entered cadet school in Vienna to become a professional officer, Franz studied violin at
116-534: A few clandestine lessons with Zdeněk Fibich he was self-taught as a composer. After graduation in 1888 he joined his father's band in Vienna, as assistant bandmaster. Two years later he became bandmaster at Losonc (today Lučenec , Slovakia ), making him the youngest bandmaster in the Austro-Hungarian Army at that time, but he left the army and joined the navy. With the navy he was first Kapellmeister at Pola ( Pula ) from 1894 to 1896, resigning in
145-812: 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. Franz Leh%C3%A1r Franz Lehár ( / ˈ l eɪ h ɑːr / LAY -har ; Hungarian : Lehár Ferenc [ˈlɛhaːr ˈfɛrɛnt͡s] ; 30 April 1870 – 24 October 1948)
174-456: A specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Namara&oldid=1178503358 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata All set index articles Monitored short pages Marguerite Namara She
203-795: 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 . 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
232-424: Is most famous for his operettas – the most successful of which is The Merry Widow ( Die lustige Witwe ) – but he also wrote sonatas , symphonic poems and marches . He also composed a number of waltzes (the most popular being Gold und Silber , composed for Princess Pauline von Metternich 's "Gold and Silver" Ball, January 1902), some of which were drawn from his famous operettas. Individual songs from some of
261-739: The Goethe Medal . On Hitler's birthday in 1938, Lehár had given him as a special gift a red Morocco leather volume in commemoration of the 50th performance of The Merry Widow . He died aged 78 in 1948 in Bad Ischl , near Salzburg , and was buried there. His younger brother Anton became the administrator of his estate, promoting the popularity of Franz Lehár's music. In 1908, the German branch of The Gramophone Company Ltd (afterwards HMV ) issued twelve extracts (mostly ensembles) from Lehár's latest operetta, Der Mann mit den drei Frauen , with
290-612: The Prague Conservatory , where his violin teacher was Antonín Bennewitz , but was advised by Antonín Dvořák to focus on composition . However, the Conservatory's rules at that time did not allow students to study both performance and composition, and Bennewitz and Lehár senior exerted pressure on Lehár to take his degree in violin as a practical matter, arguing that he could study composition on his own later. Lehár followed their wishes, against his will, and aside from
319-640: The Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in a series of 78-rpm recordings for English Decca (released in the U.S. by London Records ) of overtures and waltzes from his operettas. The recordings had remarkable sound for their time because they were made using Decca's Full Frequency Range Recording process, one of the first commercial high fidelity techniques. These recordings were later issued on LP (in 1969 on Decca eclipse ECM 2012 and reprocessed stereo on ECS 2012) and CD. A compilation of his recordings has been released by Naxos Records . Following
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#1732765472232348-431: 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 . 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
377-557: The Bells), to maximize his personal control over performance rights to his works. Lehár's relationship with the Nazi regime was an uneasy one. He had always used Jewish librettists for his operas and had been part of the cultural milieu in Vienna which included a significant Jewish contingent. Further, although Lehár was Roman Catholic , his wife, Sophie (née Paschkis) had been Jewish before her conversion to Catholicism upon marriage, and this
406-647: 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
435-604: The collapse of the Berlin Wall, a set of discs recording the 1939 Saarbrücken concert of Lehár's works by German State Transmitter Saarbrücken conducted by Franz Lehár himself was discovered in East German state archives. This was released on CDs by Classic Produktion Osnabrück in 2000. Gustav Mahler and his young wife Alma went to see Lehár's The Merry Widow in Vienna and loved it so much that they danced to its tunes as soon as they were home. From memory they played
464-561: The composer conducting. The singers included Mizzi Günther , Louise Kartousch and Ludwig Herold. In 1929 and 1934, Lehár had conducted for Odeon Records The Land of Smiles and Giuditta , starring Richard Tauber , Vera Schwarz and Jarmila Novotná . A 1942 Vienna broadcast of his operetta Paganini conducted by the composer has survived, starring soprano, Esther Réthy and tenor, Karl Friedrich . A 1942 Berlin radio production of Zigeunerliebe with Herbert Ernst Groh , conducted by Lehár, also survives. In 1947, Lehár conducted
493-540: The later year when his first opera, Kukuschka (reworked as Tatjana in 1906), premiered in Leipzig. It was only a middling success and Lehár eventually rejoined the army, with service in the garrisons at Trieste , Budapest (1898) and finally Vienna from 1899 to 1902. In 1902 he became conductor at the historic Vienna Theater an der Wien , where his operetta Wiener Frauen was performed in November of that year. He
522-521: The operatic tenor Richard Tauber , who sang in many of his operettas, beginning with a revival of his 1910 operetta Zigeunerliebe in 1920 and then Frasquita [ de ] in 1922, in which Lehár once again found a suitable post-war style. Lehár made a brief appearance in the 1930 film adaptation The Land of Smiles starring Tauber. Between 1925 and 1934 he wrote six operettas specifically for Tauber's voice. By 1935 he decided to form his own publishing house, Glocken-Verlag (Publishing House of
551-407: The operettas have become standards, notably "Vilja" from The Merry Widow and "You Are My Heart's Delight" (" Dein ist mein ganzes Herz ") from The Land of Smiles ( Das Land des Lächelns ). His most ambitious work, Giuditta in 1934 is closer to opera than to operetta. It contains the ever popular "Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß" ("My lips, they kiss so hot"). Lehár was also associated with
580-447: 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). 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
609-505: The right place to rough it, an escape from the world. " 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 1931, 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
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#1732765472232638-454: The waltz on the piano, but could not remember the exact run of one passage. The next day they went to Vienna's main music shop Doblinger [ de ] , but hesitated to admit that they were looking for the score of what would be considered a "popular" operetta. While Mahler distracted the staff by questioning them about the sales of his own compositions, Alma browsed through the music score of The Merry Widow . As soon as they were out on
667-562: 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 . In the early 1930s, her singing voice strained from overwork, she appeared in
696-586: Was an Austro-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas , of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow ( Die lustige Witwe ). Lehár was born in the northern part of Komárom , Kingdom of Hungary (now Komárno, Slovakia), the eldest son of Franz Lehar Sr. (1838–1898), an Austrian bandmaster in the Infantry Regiment No. 50 of the Austro-Hungarian Army and Christine Neubrandt (1849–1906),
725-615: Was born 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
754-727: 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
783-858: Was limited. It is alleged that he tried personally to secure Hitler's guarantee of the safety of one of his librettists, Fritz Löhner-Beda , but he was not able to prevent the murder of Beda in Auschwitz-III . He also tried to prevent the arrest of Louis Treumann , the first Danilo in The Merry Widow , but the 70-year old Treumann and his wife Stefanie were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp on 28 July 1942, where Stefanie died in September of that year and Louis died on 5 March 1943. On 12 January 1939 and 30 April 1940, Lehár personally received awards from Hitler in Berlin and Vienna, including
812-862: 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
841-534: Was sufficient to generate hostility towards them personally and towards his work. Hitler enjoyed Lehár's music, and hostility diminished across Germany after Joseph Goebbels ' intervention on Lehár's part. In 1938 Mrs. Lehár was given the status of "Ehrenarierin" ( honorary Aryan by marriage). Nonetheless, attempts were made at least once to have her deported. The Nazi regime was aware of the uses of Lehár's music for propaganda purposes: concerts of his music were given in occupied Paris in 1941. Even so, Lehár's influence
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