Description

Arkansas-born Mary Lewis (1900–1941) was a charming lyric soprano of great beauty whose career was cut very short and whose life was fascinating and often tempestuous. Lewis was not your average singer. She left home at the age of 18 and joined a vaudeville troupe; she sang in cabarets in San Francisco; and was a member of the Bathing Beauties of the Christie Comedies. She subsequently studied with Jean de Reszke in Paris and made her operatic debut as Marguerite in Faust at the Vienna Volksoper in 1923. In 1924 she sang in the world premiere of Vaughn Williams’s Hugh the Drover. Her recorded legacy, though small, reveals a rare beauty. This set contains all of her acoustic HMV and electric Victor recordings, including six unpublished sides, as well as a selection of material from radio transcriptions.