Opera super stars like Lily Pons, Maria Callas, and Leontyne Price are almost always sopranos, not mezzo-sopranos, a voice range between the low alto and high soprano. Yet mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne was described as “the most American of all operatic singers” in a 1991 New York Times article by Will Crutchfield. He said she has “a can-do technical command of the voice, ready intelligence, Protestant work ethic in excelsis … [and] melting-pot versatility.”
Few opera stars begin singing primarily in a soprano range, then in both mezzo and soprano, and wind up completely in the mezzo range as did Horne. “Her unique timbre has a hint of metal at the center, a ringing and sweet soprano top, and a stentorian low contralto that booms as no other anywhere,” a Kennedy Center Honors article said.
Uniquely Mezzo
“I’ve sung everything—from soup to nuts, I’ve sung it. If I have a legacy, it’s that I did sing so much variety and that it can be done,” Horne said in a Jonathan Tichler Metropolitan Opera website article.
Marilyn Berneice Horne was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania in 1934 during the Depression. At 18 months, she sang “a garbled rendition of ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland,'” Horne remembered in her autobiography “Marilyn Horne: My Life,” co-authored by Jane Scovell. At 4 years old, she sang “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms” at a Franklin Delano Roosevelt political rally. “I was the Shirley Temple of the Appalachian Plateau,” she said.
Her father had a “lovely voice,” according to Horne. Bentz Horne, a professional-level soloist at churches and temples, held his talented daughters to high standards and sought out singing opportunities for them. Marilyn—“Jackie” to her family and friends—and her older sister Gloria became a busy singing duo.
Horne began voice lessons at the age of 5 , but she was 8 when teacher Edna Luce taught her the correct breathing that became the foundation of her singing throughout her long and varied career.
She was 7 and sister Gloria 9 when they started singing patriotic songs for World War II U.S. Treasury bonds rallies and school programs. Horne credits this duet-singing experience with her ability to listen and blend with singing partners, a skill that served her well in her long, famous association with the great Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland. “I learned my lesson with my sister—you have to blend in order to produce the best effects. It’s as true for singing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” at a bond rally as it is for singing “Mira Norma” in an opera house,” she added.
A wise decision to move the family to California plopped Horne in the middle of a rich, creative culture teeming with music education and performing opportunities. The Horne sisters sang in “The Roger Wagner Chorale” with future famous colleagues such as soprano Marni Nixon, singing voice for Deborah Kerr and Audrey Hepburn in the movies “The King and I” and “My Fair Lady,” respectively. They also sang in the accomplished St. Luke’s Episcopal Church choir. Both choirs became providers of Hollywood movies background music, and thus, Horne began her “behind the-scenes film career,” she remembered. She continued her schooling on the MGM lot along with such classmates as actors Roddy McDowell and Elizabeth Taylor.
Horne called this period her “DooWah Years,” because “we always seemed to be singing ‘DooWah, DooWah,” she said. Around this time Horne’s uncanny ability to mimic singers and sound was discovered. She imitated an electric guitar needed in Hawaiian music for a TV series. A guitar couldn’t be found, so Horne was recorded faking it with thumb and finger pressing and releasing her nostrils.
A few years later, after making her opera debut with the Los Angeles Guild Opera as Hata in Friedrich Smetana’s, “The Bartered Bride,” followed by Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel,” Hollywood beckoned once again. Producer and director Otto Preminger’s film, “Carmen Jones” was lyricist Oscar Hammerstein’s re-creation of Georges Bizet’s opera, “Carmen” in the black idiom. They required a voice-over singer for actress Dorothy Dandridge as the gypsy Carmen. Enter Marilyn Horne and her fantastic ability to mimic voices. In addition to approximating the timbre of Dandridge’s voice, Horne sang with an uncannily accurate Southern accent.
With a scholarship to the University of Southern California she was able to study voice with famous voice pedagogue, William Vennard. In operatic bass Jerome Hines’s book “Great Singers on Great Singing,” Horne said the vocal work she did with Vennard and her late former husband, conductor Henry Lewis, was “the most important of [her] whole career.” While at USC, she took master classes with legendary soprano Lotte Lehmann. It was a bumpy first encounter as Lehmann mercilessly berated 17-year-old Horne’s German diction after Horne sang a German “lied,” or song, in front of a small audience. The experience “proved to be one of the most upsetting moments of [her] life,” Horne recalled in her book. The two became friends in later years, however. Lehmann, a brilliant singer of lieder (songs) coached Horne on interpreting German recital literature.
Performances on The Arthur Godfrey television show and as a soloist in Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” directed by conductor Leopold Stokowski, followed. When another California resident, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, heard her sing, he invited her to sing his music at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice. A year of voice study in Vienna came next, and Horne auditioned for the Gelsenkirchen Opera Company.
“A personal slave ship,” is Horne’s description of her three years with the government-subsidized German company. They happily hired the 22-year-old then-soprano, but a brutally packed schedule and substandard working conditions took their toll. In addition, the town of Gelsenkirchen was in the middle of a coal and steel area with “a climate that ranged all the way from fog to rain to snow, and don’t forget the dirt,” she remembered in her book.
Her Big Break
Fortunately, the San Francisco Opera heard of Horne’s Gelsenkirchen success in the then little-known opera. Her first big opera break came with the San Francisco Opera’s production of “Wozzeck.” They asked Horne to audition because they had lost their soprano due to illness. San Francisco Opera director Kurt Adler described it as “one of the greatest auditions he’d ever witnessed,” she said.
“The word ‘phenomenon’ is really the only word people were using in those days,” Martin Katz, Horne’s recital accompanist for 35-plus years said in a National Endowment for the Arts interview. He explained early audiences’ reactions to Horne’s talent and versatility was because it was rare to hear a big, mezzo voice that had high notes, astounding agility, and the ability to spin beautiful, clear soft notes in addition to full, unforced loud ones. “It was not just applause, but a kind of ‘wow’ factor that audiences … would experience,” Katz remembered.
Horne’s next big break came when Sutherland needed a mezzo to replace another indisposed singer. Sutherland was about to make her debut in New York at a Town Hall recital concert version of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera “Beatrice di Tenda.” This was the beginning of Horne and Sutherland’s famed collaboration singing the bel canto operas of Bellini and Gioachino Rossini. Horne described bel canto as,”18th-century Italian vocal style and technique that emphasizes beauty of sound as well as ease, flexibility and brilliance of performance.” The New York Times gave Sutherland rave reviews, but Horne wasn’t even mentioned.
That oversight was corrected when Horne made her Metropolitan Opera debut, however. “Miss Horne, at the end of the third act … received a standing ovation. People just stood, applauding and yelling,” wrote New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg. She sang the mezzo-soprano role of Adalgisa to Sutherland’s soprano in the title role of Bellini’s opera “Norma.” Callas, Sutherland, and Horne were largely responsible for the revival of bel canto singing. Reviving lesser-known Rossini operas became a hallmark of Horne’s career, and won her Italy’s first Rossini Medaglia d'Oro, created especially for her.
Horne sang in most of the great opera houses of the world. Additional honors and awards include the National Medal of the Arts, The Kennedy Center Honors, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She won four of her 15 Grammy nominations, and her discography totals over 50 recordings of opera, oratorio, song cycles, concert literature, hymns, and some musical theater. She also performed music of American composers such as William Bolcom, Leonard Bernstein, and John Corigliano.
