Mary McCormic

For more than a decade (early 1920s to late 1930s), McCormic was among the famous sopranos in the world. She was most known for her leading roles with the Paris National Opera, the Opéra-Comique (14 years), the Monte Carlo Opera, and the Chicago Civic Opera (10 years). She spent much of 1937 touring with the Kryl Symphony Orchestra.[3]

McCormic was born in Belleville, Arkansas. A onetime obscure Arkansas housewife, McCormic rose to stardom and enjoyed a colorful personal life — four marriages and four divorces (men of no resemblance to one another), almost a fifth, a high-dollar lawsuit defense for assaulting an unauthorized female biographer, boom and bust personal wealth, witty humor, and brush with royalty. McCormic captured world intrigue with the panache of the operas she starred, all with the backdrop of being born at the end of the Gilded Age; growing up as a teenager during World War I; flourishing as an opera superstar through the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, the Jazz Age, and the Great Crash; and failing in her last two high-profile marriages in the throes of the Great Depression. She died, age 91, in Amarillo, Texas.

Chicago Opera Association

Mary McCormic from a 1921 publication.

• 1921–1922 Season — Operatic debut as Micaela in Carmen. McCormic was a protégé of Mary Garden, who, rather than sing, debuted as general director for what became the final year of Chicago Opera Association.
• February 1 and 8, 1922 — New York debut as Musetta in La Boheme at the Manhattan Opera House.

• 1924 — McCormic, early in her career, gained the artist management services of Charles L. Wagner (1869–1956), who also managed world figures that included Mary Garden, Amelita Galli-Curci, Walter Gieseking, Jussi Björling, Alexander Kipnis, and Jeanette MacDonald.
• 1938 — McCormic, later in her career, was managed by Mme. LaReine.[10]

Born in Belleville, Arkansas, and raised in Dardanelle, Arkansas and Ola, Arkansas, McCormic, was known growing up as Mamie Harris. Mary McCormic was one of four children born to:

• John H. Harris (c. 1860 in Forsyth, Georgia – 9 November 1946)[11] and wife,
• Mary Jimmie Harris (née Williard; c. 1865 in Tennessee – 31 December 1929 in Amarillo, Texas)[12]

1. Odelle Crawford Harris (4 July 1886 in Belleville, Arkansas – 26 May 1950 in Amarillo, Texas)
2. Thurman Harris (died young)
3. Mamie Harris (11 November 1889 in Belleville, Arkansas – 10 February 1981 in Amarillo, Texas)
4. Williard Harris (10 February 1892 in Yell County, Arkansas – 24 March 1949 in Amarillo, Texas)[13]
5. Norborn Harris (c. 1898 – 10 February 1944 in San Francisco)[14]

1. Johnnie Harris (a girl, died young)

Mamie's interest in becoming an opera star began at age nine, and continued while attending Ola High School of Ola, Arkansas. She, with her family, moved to Portales, New Mexico in 1907, then to Amarillo, Texas in 1909.

Emil Frey Myers (1886–1957) gave McCormic's her first voice lessons in Amarillo. He was the conductor the Amarillo Civic Chorus and was a major concert promoter in the Texas Panhandle. Myers, with his wife, Lila, founded the Amarillo School of Music, Inc.

McCormic's father and two brothers, Odell and Williard, built a grocery store business — J H Harris & Sons and Harris Food Stores and Rolling Stone Stores (as many as 10 stores in Texas located in Borger, Pampa, Dalhart and Amarillo). The business was sold in 1946, shortly before the death of the father. The father, Odell, and Williard also operated a 58,000-acre (230 km²) ranch in Union County, New Mexico. The father purchased the first portion of the ranch in 1915.

During a 1914 Tri-State Fair Music Festival in Amarillo, McCormic became aware of the operatic possibilities of her voice.[15] By way of a Methodist Choir in Chicago and a singing contest sponsored by Mary Garden, her operatic potential became known to others.[16]

College

Mary McCormic and Vittorio Trevisan, from a 1921 publication.

McCormic studied music at Ouachita College,[16] University of Arkansas and then, with the intention of becoming a lyric soprano, Northwestern University where she took vocal lessons.[17] McCormic became a protégé of Mary Garden (1874–1967). Both McCormic and Garden had been vocal students of the renowned voice teacher Mrs. Sarah Robinson-Duff (née Robinson; 1858–1934)[18]

Gentlemen, meet Mr. McCormic.

— Mary McCormic, 1936
referring to her new husband Homer V. Johannsen[25]

I abhor shooting animals, except vicious animals — such as men.

— Mary McCormic, 1936
commenting on her love of deep sea fishing and on the return of her father from a deer hunt[26]

That's the first time that I've used the word 'obey.'

— Mary McCormic, 1936
referring to wedding vows with Homer V. Johannsen[27]

I marry 'em; gosh, why can't you newspapermen count 'em?

— Mary McCormic, 1937
anticipated marriage no. 5 to Joseph Patrick Reilly[28]

• 1933: Paddy the Next Best Thing

In 1944, Wilfred Bain, dean of the University of North Texas College of Music, recruited Mary McCormic to create and direct an Opera Workshop. McCormic transformed herself from diva to artist-in-residence educator. She founded, defined, directed, and, when necessary, defended the school's first Opera Workshop. She built the Opera Workshop from scratch – on a shoestring budget – molding it over 16 prolific years into what has become her crowning legacy that, for 79 years, has enriched the Southwestern United States. Bain is regarded as one of the great music school deans of all time. In books and memoirs of accomplishments, Bain often tells of the hiring of Mary McCormic as one of his great accomplishments at North Texas.

The North Texas Opera Workshop was the first collegiate touring opera workshops west of the Mississippi and, at the time of its founding, was the only opera production company in existence in the Southwest. The San Antonio Grand Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera in the Heights and others were not yet in existence.

Through the opera workshop, McCormic pioneered an approach to opera in an era that wiped out major opera companies on the heels of the Great Depression. The new "low-cost workshop" model also offered new opportunities for composers who otherwise would never have their operas produced. And the workshop model gave hope for opera itself, when many in the world dismissed opera as a bygone luxury of the rich. The new "low cost model" also gave access in regions of the world that otherwise had little hope of having opera.

Under McCormic, the opera workshop performed locally, toured, and did broadcasts in radio and TV often with near quality of a reputable professional company.

When the Dallas Opera was founded in 1957, the UNT Opera Workshop and Vocal Studies provided a steady supply of singers for the Dallas Opera Chorus.

In 1966, McCormic retired and moved to Amarillo to make her home with her widowed sister-in-law, Mrs. Odell Harris.

The UNT Opera Workshop is an integral part of one of the more comprehensive music schools in the world; a school that, since the 1940s, and in recent years, holds the largest enrollment of any music institution accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.[29]

• Blanche Robinson (Mrs. Martin Hennion Robinson) (née Williams born May 18, 1883, near Liberty, Kansas; died August 1969 Los Angeles) composed "Love Was a Beggar" for Mary McCormic.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mary McCormic.

Mary is buried at Llano Cemetery, Amarillo in section D, lot 6 space 1 (February 12, 1981). By her is:

Pat Harris, Section D lot 6 space 1A (February 22, 1993)

Mary Elizabeth Harris, Section D lot 6 space 2 (February 6, 1990)

Willard Harris, Section D lot 6 space 2 (March 26, 1949)

• McCormic's Grave Marker and Llano Cemetery in Amarillo
• Biography of Mary McCormic (in German), Operissimo concertissimo, Milan, Zurich