Soprano's Return

A smiling, plump-cheeked woman sat stiffly in a wheel chair before a CBS microphone last Sunday afternoon and sang to the lush strains of Andre Kostelanetz's orchestra. To thousands of listeners the ring of Marjorie Lawrence's voice was the most cheering news in many a day.

A year ago last spring, Soprano Lawrence was riding the crest. She had given U.S. operagoers six lessons of sturdy, full-throated Wagnerian song. At a time when the mighty Kirsten Flagstad dominated the Metropolitan, Marjorie Lawrence's star was bright enough not to be eclipsed. Off stage, the Australian soprano doted on swimming, tennis, horseback riding; on stage, she seemed equally brimful of health. As Bruennhilde, she surprised and delighted operaphiles by leaping astride her horse and galloping off in an almost unheard-of concurrence with Wagner's stage directions. Less in character, though a triumph, was her startlingly realistic strip tease as Salome.

In March 1941 she married Dr. Thomas King, ruddy, boyish Miami osteopath. Three months later, while rehearsing Die Walkuere in Mexico City, she was stricken by paralysis. To Minneapolis she went for treatment by famed Australian Nurse Elizabeth Kenny, began taking exercises on which she spends almost four hours daily. She also improved the time by perfecting the role of Isolde in the original German, which she had previously sung only in French.

Not ready yet to return to opera, Marjorie Lawrence was none the less brimming last week with plans. She had accepted two charity concerts, had decided on an active season in radio.

Listeners to Soprano Lawrence's broadcast last Sunday could form no final conclusions from the simple, light program she sang (Richard Strauss's Devotion, Annie Laurie, Waltzing Mathilda), but were reassured to find her voice apparently as good as ever. Friends might wonder if she would ever again mount an opera stage, much less a horse, but no such doubts assailed Marjorie Lawrence. Said she, proudly: "I can now walk across the room! Before the winter is over, I'll be back at the Metropolitan."

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