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illusions), there are buried nuggets of insight that belie many of the myths
that have risen up around Walska’s legend, endlessly repeated whether they
are true or not. It’s important to give her memoir due respect, as it’s the
only surviving document from her view, and she readily supplies convincing
dates and corroboration when she needs to make a point.
One such point was Walska’s assertion that her American singing career,
plagued with mysteriously cancelled concert venues and reviews ranging from
tepid to downright hostile, were due more to the influence of Rockefeller
money than the perceived quality of her soprano voice, which was said to be
more than acceptable by many who actually knew her.
Few remember, if they ever even knew, that Walska’s fourth
husband, the unimaginably rich Harold McCormick whose
father Cyrus had invented the mechanical reaper, obtained a
divorce from his wife Edith Rockefeller McCormick in order
to be free to marry Walska. McCormick had been in love with
Walska for years, but like Rhett Butler with Scarlett O’Hara,
had trouble catching her between husbands. Theirs was Walska’s
longest-lasting marriage, but Edith, daughter of Standard
Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller and thus immensely
wealthy in her own right, was a woman scorned.
Finding herself divorced from Harold McCormick
after bearing him five children, Edith purportedly
used her fortune to obtain revenge by thwarting
Walska’s professional success on American soil.
In spite of her self-proclaimed uniqueness, was
Ganna Walska entirely her own creation? Did she
emulate any notable personality who preceded her?
Were there any contemporary personages, particularly
among the especially flamboyant times in which she lived
the first few decades of her 97 years, that could have influenced
her style? Further digging intoWalska’s personal history, beyond
the self-chosen revelations contained in her autobiography,
distinctly point to little-explored sources that clearly inflamed
Walska’s natural inclinations toward the dramatic.
From Russian Belle of the
Ball to Parisian Theatre Owner
Firstly, one cannot discount the rather staggering timeline and
locations that comprise Walska’s basic biography, especially before she
came to America. While born in Poland, she came of age among the
glittering society of pre-Revolutionary Russia. Known as the “Russian
Silver Age,” the first two decades of the twentieth century saw a cultural
flowering that was unprecedented in Russia, rivaling the Renaissance in
fifteenth-century Italy for its effects on literature, art, dance, costume and
music. What could be headier for any teenager than being chosen by the
Tsar himself as the most beautiful woman at a royal ball during this
splendid era, as Ganna Walska was?
Many of the creative Russian forces of art, dance, music, and
design ended up in Paris, as did Walska who was safely ensconced
there a few years before the Bolshevik Revolution began. Perhaps
it’s too simplistic to say that the artists, who traditionally enjoyed
travel and the exchange of ideas between the urban centers of Paris,
Moscow and St. Petersburg, simply changed the party venue. But
there is no denying the heady atmosphere that enveloped the French
capital in the teens and 1920s.
What became many of the new century’s landmark performances, from
the 1913 debut of
Le Sacre du Printemps,
Igor Stravinsky’s seminal ballet
danced by Nijinsky and the Ballets Russes, to Josephine Baker’s shocking
Revue Nègre
that epitomized “le jazz hot,” had their debut at the Théâtre
des Champs-Elysée. Ganna Walska was at ground zero, having gained
ownership of the Théâtre in 1923; she remained involved for nearly fifty
years until she gave up her shares to ensure the Paris Orchestra would have
a permanent home there.
Left: Ganna Walska in the
New York studio of Herman
Mishkin (1871-1948),
an immigrant from Minsk,
Russia who served as
official photographer for
the Metropolitan Opera
from 1910 to 1932.
Mishkin was known for his
especially fine studio “flats,”
or painted backgrounds,
that he commissioned from
opera set painters.
Right: Promotional photo of
Ganna Walska holding one
of her signature perfumes,
with the provocative name
Divorçons
(Let’s Divorce).