Mary Garden (20 February 1874 – 3 January 1967) was a Scottish-American operatic lyric soprano, then mezzo-soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century.

Possessing a beautiful lyric voice that had a wide vocal range and considerable amount of flexibility, Garden first arose to success in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century.

Although director for only one year, Garden was notably responsible for staging the world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges before the company went bankrupt in 1922.

[4] She showed promise as a young singer, and studied with Sarah Robinson-Duff in Chicago under the financial support of wealthy patrons David and Florence Mayer.

In 1896 she pursued further studies in Paris, chiefly with Ange-Pierre de Trabadelo and Lucien Fugère, still under the support of the Mayers.

Garden made her professional opera debut with the company on 10 April 1900 in the title role of Gustave Charpentier's Louise, which had received its world premiere only two months before.

Although Garden had been preparing the role, her debut, at the eighth performance of the work, was unscheduled as she was a last minute replacement for Marthe Rioton who had become ill.[3] From 1901 for two years, she carried on an affair with André Messager, who conducted her in Louise.

In 1905 she sang at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in the world premiere of Massenet's Chérubin, a role which the composer wrote specifically for her.

She further astounded American audiences with her uncanny portrayal of a young boy in Massenet's Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (1908) and in the United States premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande.

She sang there for one season, notably portraying Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet (1908) and the title part in Henry Février's Monna Vanna (1909) among other roles.

Afterwards, Garden returned again to New York in 1909 to perform the title role in the French version of Richard Strauss's Salome.

[4] In late April 1912 Garden along with Caruso and the Metropolitan Opera Company gave special concerts in which they raised $12,000(over quarter of a million in 2017) dollars for aid to survivors of the Titanic tragedy.

Among the many roles she performed with the Chicago Civic Opera are Charlotte in Massenet's Werther (1924), Katyusha in Franco Alfano's Risurrezione (1925, in French) and the heroine of Arthur Honegger's Judith (1927), the last two both United States premières.

[2] Garden retired from the opera stage in 1934, after making her last appearance as Katyusha in Franco Alfano's Risurrezione at the Opéra-Comique.

Tennyson later used her great wealth to provide scholarships for young singers to study the French repertoire with Garden; including soprano Beverly Sills.

She had a number of feuds with various colleagues from which she invariably emerged victorious, eventually ending up in control of the Chicago Opera.

A relentless self-publicist, a woman however of genuine beauty, her flamboyant personal life was often the subject of more attention than her public performances, and her affairs with men, real or imagined, were liable to emerge as scandalous rumours in the newspapers.

[2] It was in recognition of her personal history that Scottish Opera chose to present in their inaugural 1962 season Pelléas et Mélisande.

By the time of the first performance Mary Garden was unable to accept her invitation to attend, being in hospital after a fall, and with her health in decline.

One such airing had Garden and Melvyn Douglas reading the play Tonight or Never by Lili Hatvany [hu]) which had recently been made into a motion picture.