13
MUSICAL COURIER
ay 17, 1923
QUEENA MARIO
First Year’s Record at the Metropolitan
JULIET, GILDA, NEDDA, MICAELA, INEZ in L’AFRICANA
MICAELA (Debut)
New York World:
L’Africana
The Evening Sun:
“For all the youthful lightness of her voice it is of pretty quality and liveliness and she uses it with taste.”
JULIET
Richard Aldrich in the N. Y. Times:
“Queena Mario was a Juliet, whose waltz song was worthy of her own model, Mme. Sembrich, in its cream> vocal coloratura. She charmed the eye as well as the ear, and acted with tenderness the tragic ending.”
New York World:
“With Mr. Johnson was Queena Mario, lovely to see and singing with the cool crystallity of a dream figure. Her voice is.not cold but it has just the ethereal quality, bordering upon the cool which is virginal and hauntingly beautiful. .	.	. It was one of the two most
memorable performances of the year, taken all in all.”
New York Post:
■ This young woman grew in charm and grace as the story unfolded. She had a rarely sympathetic manner, the artless, unsophisticated charm of youth, and a voice that was not only true to pitch but one that gave at times unusual sensuous pleasure and was full of expression and extremely :beautiful.
.	.	. We are certain from a long
experience with Juliettes .	.	. that
here is a great ‘find’! . . . There were moments in the balcony scene that recalled Geraldine Farrar and Emma Eames at their best, both vocally and pictorially.”
INEZ IN L’AFRICANA
Richard Aldrich in the New York Times:
“Miss Queena Mario, the young American singer, had the most important opportunity that has yet been given her at the Metropolitan as Inez; and she seized it with a fulness of competence and skill that gratified her friends. Her singing of the romanza at the beginning was excellent in every way and so it was throughout the opera. The voice is light; it has the grace and flexibility of a light voice, together with agreeable quality and much finished skill in vocalism.”
Deems Taylor in the New York World:
“Miss Mario, with her first important part to create, turned a conventional swooning operatic heroine into a real and utterly charming person and sang as well as she looked.”
W. H. Humiston in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“The Inez was Queena Mario, who again showed that she possesses all the qualities that go to make a lyric singer of the most beautiful type. .
She lends the glamour of her personality to each one. Her voice was in good form and she made the most of her aria in the first act.”
Gilda of that very gifted young American soprano, known to the Metropolitan program as Queena Mario. If this young lady keeps on as she has begun, she will soon find herself in the class with such famous American sopranos as Emma Eames and Lillian Nordica. The quality of her voice, her method of using it, her unconventional and natural acting of the role all combine to make her appearance in it noteworthy.”
NEDDA IN PAGLIAGGI
Katharine Spaeth in the Evening Mail:
“There was the dainty Queena Mario as Nedda, a role in which her lovely voice takes on vibrant tones for the bird song and the throb of actual emotion in the scene with Silvio.”
W. H. Henderson in the New
York Herald:
“In Pagliacci there was a very charming little Nedda in the person of Miss Queena Mario. In this case again the soprano had music which suited her voice and style, especially the song in the first act and the duet with Silvio.”
As Inez in
ican girl, of the race of Phillips and Cary and Kellogg and Nordica and Eames and Homer and Farrar. Her name like theirs seems destined to ornament the page of operatic history.”
GILDA IN RIGOLETTO
New York Post:
“The Gilda was Queena Mario, an American singer, and the same personable young artist who was applauded enthusiastically two weeks ago as a fascinating Juliette. It is a pleasure to record the satisfaction to the audience with her singing, as Gilda. Miss Mario sang it so delightfully as to all but efface the memory of a world-renowned artist who appeared in the same character with the same cast only two weeks ago. Her voice infallibly rang true, her vocalization of the ‘Caro Nome’ was beautiful . . . and at all times she was a girlish, alluring figure.”
W. H. Humiston in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“With all due reference to the splendid art of .	.	., the real feature of
the Rigoletto performance was the lovely
“Without claque, without exaggerated heralding, without sensational tricks of the theater, Queena Mario walked out on the Metropolitan stage yesterday and in one short act made her way straight into the composite heart of the big holiday audience. In the usually lifeless role of Micaela, she presented a wistful appealing figure of vocal and physical beauty such as has not been seen in a Micaela debut in many moons.
“Rather nervous at first, she gained ease during the duet with Jose and by the time her big aria in act three came, she held the house in the palm of her hands. Her voice is light but it has a' fragile loveliness of tone and texture, a clarity and youthfulness that calls for nothing but superlatives. To look at, she is slim, almost wan, with simplicity and a helpless childishness of manner that runs close to pathetic. She made the peasant girl romantic and delicately naive.
“After her aria there was a storm of applause, . . . and when Florence Easton left her alone before the curtain, the house thundered. Through the entire entr’acte, the applause died down and reawakened alternately! but the little Mario girl did not come out again.”
Max Smith in the New York
American:
“Among the various operatic incidents, of yesterday ... a special matinee of Carmen and the season’s first “Traviata,” none gave more delight than Queena Mario’s singing as Micaela. . . . From a pupil of Marcella Sembrich, of course, one may expect a good deal. But it is not going too far to say that Miss Mario not only sang the first act duet and the third act air quite as well from a purely vocal point of view as they have been sung here in recent years—nay, better, in fact —but lent Micaela’s music for once genuine warmth and vitality.”
Pitts Sanborn in the New York Globe:
“Her voice is not powerful but in tone it is clear, pure and true, and managed with consummate skill. Moreover, she presented such a lovely, winsome and appealing Micaela that at the end of her big aria in the third act she was fairly overwhelmed :by the applause and cheers of the holiday audience.”
Town Topics:
“The surprise of the performance was little Queena Mario. She began by playing a Micaela that really was gentle and sweet and maidenly, and when she came to her aria .	.	., she sang it so
purely, so gracefully, so appealingly, that after she had done, the house took a moment to catch its breath and then thundered a greeting to a new prima donna. And Queena Mario is an Amer-
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