Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) was a New York society lady and amateur opera singer who compared herself to divas like Frieda Hempel and Luisa Tetrazzini but sounded like a slide whistle in terrible pain. Known as the “Terror of the High Cs,” she lacked rhythm, pitch, tone, talent, and, crucially, self-awareness. What she had instead were sincerity, ego, some artistic feeling, and a bunch of money. Naturally she was an enormous success.
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Tickets to her annual self-funded recitals at the Ritz-Carlton went like hotcakes, and her Carnegie Hall debut at age 76 sold out weeks in advance. They came to laugh not just at the way she mangled Mozart and butchered Brahms but at her elaborate costumes and original choreography. You’d think Jenkins would’ve caught wise to the reason for her popularity. But like Malvolio in Twelfth Night, William Hung on “American Idol,” and Rod Blagojevich at any given media appearance, she seems to have belonged to the class of comic characters who don’t have the foggiest notion they’re comic. Madame Flo’s apparent cluelessness was so complete as to become a kind of triumph.
As a trained musician with two ears in working order, McMoon knows he has some explaining to do. “People used to say to me, ‘Why does she do it?’” he says. “I always thought the better question was, ‘Why did I?’” This is clearly the primary question for Temperley, too, who lets other avenues of inquiry—how much did she know? Why do some rich people mistake their wealth for talent? If a singer makes roomfuls of people deliriously happy, who’s to say she’s not an artist?—drop.
