Marlene Wagman-Geller

Aug 28, 2024 by Marlene Wagman-Geller

 

Lillian Nordica

 

“People have voices equal to mine, plenty have talents equal to mine; but I have worked.”

 —Lillian Nordica  

 

Opera’s heroines storm across the stage, howling anguish born from betrayal, jealousy, vengeance. In a nod to life imitating art, Lillian Nordica’s days were as tempestuous as those of the women she portrayed. To understand the saga of the Yankee diva, peek behind the curtain at the Nordica Homestead Museum.

Amanda Norton brought her daughter, Lillie, to Backus Corner to see Aunt Eunice, the neighborhood witch from Salem. The seamstress (her day job) read the two-year-old’s palm and predicted, “You will sail the seven seas, and the Crowned Heads of Europe will bow before you.” The local fortuneteller words came to pass, but they did not give full justice to the fabulous fate that awaited the girl from Farmington.

Lillian’s paternal grandfather was James Instance Norton. When Edwin, the youngest of his eleven sons, strummed his fiddle, his father banished “the devil’s instrument.” Edwin continued to play and sang in the Methodist church, where he met his wife, Amanda. Her father, known as “Camp-Meeting John Allen,” chided a cynic, “You ill-begotten, slab-sided, God-forsaken stack-pole of Hell.” Far different than her father, Amanda’s favorite aphorism was “Give me a spoon, and I won’t hesitate to dig a tunnel through a mountain.”

Edwin and Amanda had five daughters they christened with non–New Englander names: Imogene, Onie, Annie, Wilhelmina (Willie), and Lillian. When a sixth daughter arrived in 1857, her parents called her Lillian (Lillie) after her sister who had died at age two. Their farm resounded with music, but Edwin could not eke out a living on his grandfather Ephraim’s land.

When Lillie was seven, the Nortons moved to Boston. After a series of boarding houses failed to generate income, Amanda worked as a saleslady at the department store Jordan Marsh and Edwin opened a photography studio until an experiment led to an explosion.

The Nortons believed Wilhelmina was Maine’s Jenny Lind, an opera singer whose adoring public had dubbed the Swedish Nightingale. Wilhelmina became one of the first students at the New England Conservatory of Music and studied under Irish-born professor John O’Neil. When her sister practiced at home, Lillie joined in until Amanda bribed her with pennies to hush. As she had not mentioned singing solo, Lillie announced, “I will sing the Old Section”—mispronouncing Sexton. 

An October visit to Farmington coincided with a flood that caused much of the town to end up in the Sandy River. Water from a contaminated well led to Wilhelmina’s death from typhoid. Two years later, as Amanda was sewing, she believed she heard her deceased daughter’s voice. Realizing Lillie shared her sister’s gift, she took the fourteen-year-old to see Professor O’Neil. When Lillie hit a high C, she became his star pupil for the next four years.

After her graduation, the famous band leader Patrick Gilmore offered Lillie the opportunity to tour the great opera houses of Europe, heady fare for a girl whose only trip had been to her parents’ native Martha’s Vineyard. She sang at London’s famous Crystal Palace, followed by a performance in Italy, the birthplace of opera. In Milan, her voice coach, Signor Sangiovanni, deemed she needed a stage name. As Lillie, (lily,) translated to “Giglio” and Norton to North, she transformed to Giglio Nordica. Lillie starred as Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata in Brecia where audiences cried out “Brava La Nordica!” “Bellissima Violetta!” Nine curtain calls followed; the next morning a string band performed under her window. On a Venetian vacation, while on a moonlight gondola ride, mother and daughter heard an aria. At Amanda’s urging, Lillian joined in. The other boats converged on the Nortons and Lillie held  a solo performance.

After singing at the Imperial Opera in St. Petersburg, Russia, Count Leo Tolstoy entertained mother and daughter at his palace where the countess played Chopin. In the Winter Palace, Lillie sang for Tsar Alexander II; eight days later, he died from an assassin’s bomb.

Another jewel appeared in the diva’s tiara in Germany. Richard Wagner’s widow, Cosima, had two consuming passions: hatred of the Jews and love of Richard. With his passing, she found purpose in their Festival Theater in Bayreuth. Cosima chose Lillie to sing the role of Elsa in Lohengrin that proved such a resounding success Madame Nordica became the most celebrated of Wagnerian heroines: Brünnhildes: Isolde, Kundry, and Venus.

In the States, she toured with the Her Majesty’s Opera Company and appeared in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and New York. Upon her return to London, the Prince of Wales was a fan. During the ground-breaking ceremony for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, with President Taft in the audience, Lillie performed the national anthem.

After years abroad, Lillie dreamed of a holiday in Farmington to visit her beloved father with whom “were passed so many happy days and years with him when I was young and cared for nothing more than his approbation and always agreeable society.” Fate had other plans; on Christmas Eve, Edwin Norton passed away in Boston.

Madame Nordica spent time at her home in Ardsley-on-Hudson which she named Villa Amanda in honor of her mother who had passed away in London. After receiving a thousand dollars for partaking in a musical, she donated the proceeds to the Suffrage Society. Lillie was infuriated over her obligation to pay taxes for a government in which she was disenfranchised. She also argued against male singers earning more than their female counterparts. Other social causes concerned animal welfare. After discovering that the snowy egret was an endangered species, she no longer used its feathers as part of her on- and off-stage fashions. Although she spent years abroad, Lillie’s allegiance remained with the country of her birth; by 1907 she stopped wearing Parisienne couture in favor of American-made gowns.

While Lillian actualized Aunt Eunice’s prediction, her love life never matched the heights of her professional success. In Paris Lillie married Frederick Gower, her second cousin, from Maine, who had achieved wealth as Alexander Graham Bell’s business manager. Frederick proved controlling, and when she insisted on performing, he burned her music and destroyed her gowns. Their union ended when Frederick attempted a solo crossing of the English Channel in a balloon and was never heard from again. Her second husband was Zoltán Döhme, a Hungarian tenor; his philandering and overspending led to divorce. In London, she became the wife of George Washington Young. His use of her money to bail himself out of floundering businesses led to their estrangement and sepapration. Lillie never had the children she desperately desired.

In 1914, during a world tour, after performing in Melbourne, Australia, after running late, she wired the captain of her ship, the Tasman, to wait for her arrival. In deference to the diva’s fame, the captain complied. The Tasman ran aground off the coast of Indonesia. For days she suffered from hypothermia, humidity, and mosquitoes until a Japanese coal ship rescued the passengers. In the grip of pneumonia, Lillie ended up in a Java hospital. To comfort a fellow patient, an American boy, George McDonald, she sang by his bedside in what was to be her final song. Her death provided a tragic end for Giglio Nordica, Lily of the North.

 

The Nordica Homestead Museum

Although the opera star travelled the world, home was her Farmington roots where she performed several times at the peak of her career. Farmington reciprocates her affection. The post office has a large wood carving of Lillie as a child, lying on the grass; an auditorium bears her name. The town’s greatest tribute to its famous daughter is the Nordica Homestead Museum, housed in the white, two-story farmhouse where she was born. Knowing how much Lillie had loved her home that her family had sold years before, her sisters, Annie and Onie, purchased the house for her on her 1911 birthday.

Guests enter the unassuming 183-year-old Cape-style farmhouse through the barn which displays a magnificent miniature model theatre, a 1955 creation by Charles Tinkham, a New England craftsman. Tinkham incorporated three Boston theaters, (Music Hall, the National Theater, and Symphony Hall), for his replica that includes sound, curtains, and lights.  Lillie’s bedroom holds her heavy, wood-frame bed. Coca-Cola collectibles that bear the image of the opera star, line the walls. A built-in china cabinet displays dinnerware. Throughout are the usual adornments of nineteenth-century families: Bibles, quilts, and tools; however, another room is vastly different from others in New England. A unique artifact is a helmet, a souvenir from when Lillie sang the role of Brünnhilde at the Metropolitan Opera. Other treasures that distinguish the home are gifts from royalty. A teakwood console was a present from a Chinese emperor. Lillian gave one of her sisters several silver spoons she received from Tsar Alexander II that a family member recently donated. There is a bejeweled fan from Queen Victoria that bears the diva’s name. Another fan, created from lace, was an 1894 gift that Cosima Wagner, gifted to Lillie in Bayreuth, Germany. Cosima included the name, Elsa, a nod to Lillie’s role in a Wagner opera. Vintage autographed photographs of famous composers and musicians abound. A photograph of how far the girl from Farmington had travelled showcases Lillian performing a few feet from President Taft. A heavily carved chair was a present from financier Diamond Jim Brady. A front parlor holds stage jewelry, mostly made by Tiffany. A mannequin is draped in Brünnhilde’s battle garb; another displays Madame’s gown, sewn with golden thread that carried a 1890s price tag exceeding a thousand dollars. Another front parlor holds a white bust of Wagner. In yellowing letters with European postage stamps, Amanda shared stories about a party where fellow guests were Baron and Baroness Rothschild, Prince Ronald Bonaparte. The proud mother described her daughter’s dress of white silk and Lyons velvet, her fan made of beautiful flowers. The missive ends, “Many thought Lillie the handsomest woman there.” A wall holds Lillie’s first formal portrait, painted when she was twenty-three, wearing a gorgeous gown, a present from the tsar. Crystal Williams, the Lillian Nordica Museum docent, remarked of the portrait, “her eyes follow you around the room.”

The great diva’s death provided a tragic curtain call for Giglio Nordica, Lily of the North.

 

A View from Her Window

Looking out from her beloved farm’s window, she could see a distant mountain peak, “Old Blue,” which rose above the Sandy River Valley.

 

Nearby Attraction: Stephen King’s House

In Bangor, Maine, one can stand outside horror writer Stephen King’s house. The iron front gate

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