Of Lena Geyer

by Marcia Davenport

From her humble beginnings as a Slavic peasant, Lena Geyer rose to become one of the greatest singers of all-to reach the top of the glittering musical world. Her story has been gathered from those who knew her Her cherished music master Pizzetti, her closest confidant, her husband, and her manager. What emerges is the complex and challenging life of a woman who wasn't afraid to aim for the stars...and reach them!

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Music

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

American author and music critic. She was born Marcia Glick, daughter of Bernard Glick and opera singer Alma Gluck, later stepdaughter of violinist Efrem Zimbalist when Alma Gluck remarried.

Davenport traveled extensively with her parents and was educated intermittently at the Friends School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Shipley School at Bryn Mawr. She began at Wellesley College but eloped to Pittsburgh in 1923 to marry Fred D. Clarke. Eventually she earned her B.A. at the University of Grenoble. Her first child was born in 1924, but in 1925 she divorced Clarke.

She took an advertising copywriting job to support herself and her daughter. In 1928 she began at the editorial staff of The New Yorker, where she worked until 1931. In 1929, she married Russell Davenport, who soon after became editor of Fortune. Davenport's second daughter was born in 1934. That same year she began as the music critic of Stage magazine.

Davenport had close ties through her mother and stepfather to the classical music world and particularly to the heady opera world of Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century. She was first celebrated as a writer for her first book, Mozart, the first published American biography of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Her marriage to Russell Davenport ended in 1944.

She also wrote several popular novels, notably The Valley of Decision, a 1940s bestseller made into a successful movie with Greer Garson and Gregory Peck.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found a very battered paperback copy of this book in the back of one of our bookshelves, and my first thought was to put it in the paper recycling. Then I read the first few pages and was hooked. Marcia Davenport’s mother Alma Gluck was “one of the world's most famous female singers at the peak of her career (circa 1910)”and this novel, if not biographical, is certainly informed by her life. Lena, a teen-aged Czech immigrant to New York City is overheard singing and is offered voice lessons. She travels to Europe each summer for lessons with Lilli Lehmann and becomes a great success in opera houses all over the world. She has a long standing affair with a wealthy European Count but when it comes to a choice between love and her career, she throws him over and marries herself to her singing. Her relationship with a conductor named Vestri mimics her mother’s long association with Toscanini. I have never been a fan of opera so I didn’t recognize plot lines or the names of arias given in their foreign languages, but that did not stop me from loving this book.

[Carol Sklenicka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marcia Davenport is an excellent writer in what now seems a sort of old-fashioned style because she is so thorough in her descriptions of character's thoughts and feelings. We'd expect snappier prose now and probably call hers serviceable but it's much better than that. My mother loved Davenport's work, partly because of her interest in Czechoslovakia. So I saved this book out of my mother's library and finally got to it this month (27 years later). Apparently this novel is loosely based on the career of Davenport's mother, Alma Gluck. I suspected that because it is too specifically detailed and convincing to be a work of pure imagination. I'd really recommend this book to anyone who loves opera. It actually had too much information about opera for me, but it still held my interest. The narration is by a supposed biographer of the singer Lena Geyer; the narrator discusses the challenges he faces as a biographer so that also adds interest for me. I'd give it five stars except there really is more than I want to know about opera. The character of Guido Vestri is apparently based on Toscanini. For me, reading this novel was yet another affirmation of my mother's good taste (which I didn't appreciate when she was alive).

[Lindig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roman a clef about her mother, Alma Gluck, the opera singer. Alma later married Efrem Zimbalist Sr., the classical violinist, which made Davenport and Efrem Zimbalist jr, the actor, step-siblings.

[John Whitehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

An imaginative investigation of an artists' life from the point of view of four different people. And very good prose writing.