Radio Script #1030

Little Talks on Common Things
December 15, 1974

It is time, on this program, that we devoted a broadcast to Maine’s most famous opera singer, Lillian Nordica. Reaching the height of her international renown in the last 15 years of the 19th century, Nordica was a star not only of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, but in most of the great opera houses of Europe, including an entire season of the Imperial Opera House in what was then the Russian capital, St. Petersburg. Nordica became especially famous, late in her career, for Wagnerian roles in several of the operas which Wagner wrote based on the legends of Norse mythology. She was called the greatest Brunhilde who ever graced an opera stage.

It has occurred to me it might interest our listeners to know how much attention Nordica paid to Maine and Maine paid to Nordica during the progress of her career.

The famous singer was born Lillian Norton, in Farmington, Maine, on December 12, 1857, the daughter of Edwin and Amanda Allen Norton. It was a family of some standing in Franklin County. The Nortons were prosperous farmers and the Allens were even better known. Nordica’s grandfather, John Allen, called “Camp Meeting John”, was the best known Methodist revival leader in Maine and was as well known throughout New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. His father, Captain William Allen, had moved his family from Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. to Maine’s Sandy River Valley in 1792.

Lillian Norton owed much to her mother, Amanda, who was with her during her training in New York, in Italy and France, and during all her tours both in the U. S. and abroad until the mother’s death in 1891. When Lillian had just come to recognition in grand opera, she gave a concert in Farmington. It occurred during the autumn following her first marriage to Frederick Gower. Lillian had two subsequent marriages, the third husband, George Washington Young, surviving her. She and Gower were married in Europe in the summer of 1883, and with the shortest possible delay hurried for the United States. They came immediately to Farmington, where the Norton clan gathered to pay homage to their noted relative.

Mother Amanda arrived first, with Nordica’s two sisters, Annie and lone. Amanda found her 83 year old father, “Camp-Meeting John” in excellent health. Two days later came Lillian and her elegantly dressed husband. They stopped for a call on Titcomb Hill at the old Norton farm built by Lillian’s great-grandfather early in the century. The place was occupied, on their visit, by James and Margie Norton, relatives to whom Mother Amanda would write a memorable letter eight years later in 1891. On one especially designated reunion day, uncles, aunts, and cousins converged on the Farmington home from many miles around.

Farmington people were by no means ignorant of their native daughter’s fame. Here was a hometown girl who had dined with the Czar of All the Russias and had sung before other crowned heads of Europe. Naturally Farmington folk wanted to hear Lillie sing, and a concert was arranged. It was not her first Farmington appearance. Of course she had been a soloist in the Methodist Choir, but she had done more than that. Just before leaving on her first trip to Europe, she had given a concert in the Methodist Church. Since then the town had acquired a new auditorium, called Music Hall Block, the crowning glory of Farmington’s Main Street.

In this new hall, Lillian gave the requested concert on the evening of September 28, 1883. For the occasion she brought from Boston her accompanist, Otto Bendix, then teaching piano at the New England Conservatory. A copy of the concert’s announcement, in the form of an old handbill, is still preserved. It says: “Music Hall, Friday Evening September 28, 1883. The Musical Event of the Season. The Lillian Norton Gower Concert. Mrs. Norton-Gower with the celebrated pianist, Mr. Otto Bendix, and a selected chorus of Franklin County singers. Doors open at 7. Concert at 8. Admission 25, 35 and 50 cents. Tickets and plan of hall at Hubbard’s.”

Lillian presented the proceeds of that concert to James Gould Butler, the Farmington historian, to be used to provide street lamps for the village. Those lamps continued in use until the coming of electric lights.

It is to be noted that the announcement of that concert made no mention of Lillian’s stage name Nordica, which, by the way, was only an Italian rendering of the name Norton. Farmington folks still knew her as Lillian Norton, though they were willing to give a side bow to her husband. So they billed her as Lillian Norton-Gower.

All during her life, wherever they might be, Lillian and her mother Amanda kept in touch with Farmington relatives. In fact the whole family was so attached to the Maine town that, in 1911, only three years before Nordica’s death, her sisters, Annie Norton Baldwin and lone Norton Walker bought and repaired the Farmington farmhouse where they had all been born, and gave it to Lillian as a birthday present. All the older generations were gone by that time, and the only Nortons left in Farmington were James and Margie’s son, Arbo, a successful merchant, one of their two daughters, Maude, and a farmer, Hiram Norton.

In August, 1911, Nordica and her third husband, George Washington Young, arrived in Farmington for a week’s visit. Immediately she was urged to give a local concert. She consented, but insisted that this one be given in the afternoon and no admission be charged. She wanted her singing this time to be a free gift to her townspeople, and she would give them just as good a performance as she had ever given in London or Milan or St. Petersburg.

Lillian’s closest living relative was Hiram Norton, a first cousin. She insisted that he, and only he, conduct her on to the stage at the Farmington Concert. The road to Hiram’s farm was almost impassable, but Arbo Norton drove her there over rocks and ruts. Cousin Hiram, who had spent his life in this inaccessible, rural spot, rose like a man of the world to the occasion. Of course he would oblige Cousin Lillie.

Early on the morning of August 17, 1911, the streets of Farmington were filled with carriages and a few early automobiles. People came from Temple, Strong, Phillips and Wilton, from New Sharon, Starks, and Madison, and some from even greater distances. The doors of Merrill Hall at the State Normal School were opened two hours before the concert. Auditorium and corridors were jammed with at least twice the 900 people the hall would seat. A hundred seats were reserved for Nordica’s relatives. Ferns and goldenrod decorated the stage.

At last a rear door opened, and Cousin Hiram led Nordica to the platform, with upraised hand, quite in the grand manner as she had taught him. The scene was sensational. Nordica, dressed in white silk crepe over white satin, wore also a necklace of pearls, several large emeralds and a diamond bracelet. When she had summoned her pianist Simmons to join her for the concert, she had told him to bring her jewels. Mme. Nordica was giving her native town a complete show, even if it was only three o’clock in the afternoon.

A leading citizen, David Knowlton, introduced her, telling how proud Farmington was of her fame. She had, said Knowlton, brought everlasting glory to her native town.

There was no printed program, but she gave a variety of selections in several languages, and gave a brief explanation of each. During the concert she received a large basket of roses from Farmington’s leading musician, Annie Woods McLeary.

It was declared to be the most dramatic, because the most romantic, of all the diva’s numerous appearances. At the end of the concert, when she came to the singing of ‘Home, Sweet Home’, she turned slowly to face the direction of her own home, two miles away. As she sang toward the open windows, the silence in the auditorium, and even in the street outside, was electric.

On the following Saturday a reception was held at the birthplace farmhouse. No individual invitations were issued. Everyone was invited and everyone came. Then there was a family reunion, a fishing trip on which Lillian caught a trout; then the week was over, and the famous Farmington girl was off again on a long tour.

Nordica was destined to die far, far away from her Farmington birthplace. She had been on a concert tour in Australia and was on the way home when she was stricken ill. Taken to a hospital in Batavia, Java, she was thought to be recovering when she had a relapse and died on December 12, 1913, at the age of 56. Her faithful accompanist Simmons procured a heavy, teakwood casket carved in the outline of a lotus, symbol of immortality. It was so heavy that it required forty coolies to carry it. Passage was booked to Massachusetts, where Simmons and others of Nordica’s party were joined by her husband George Young. They took the body to Paris and on to London, where in King’s Weyth House Church, where she and Young had been married five years earlier, the funeral was held on July 6, 1914. Her body was cremated and the ashes brought to America.

Earlier in this broadcast I said that in 1891 Nordica’s mother Amanda wrote from London a letter to the James Nortons in Farmington. In that letter Amanda asked a question that shows that the town of Lillian’s birth was never far from her or her mother’s minds. Amanda wrote: “Did anyone from Farmington go to Portland to hear Lillie sing?”

Now in 1974, 83 years after Amanda wrote this question, we know indeed that several Farmington people did go to Portland for the concert. Farmington’s present historians, Benjamin and Natalie Butler, assure us that Farmington folk were always eager to hear their great singer, and went to Boston and even to New York for her concerts.

Year: 1974