Like Lily Pons and Geraldine Farrar, Gladys Swarthout was a glamorous star who made a great deal of money in movies, radio and recordings. She was born in Deepwater, Missouri and was a rather drab personage until her husband, Frank Chapman (whom she married in 1932), took charge of her career. Even her 1924 debut, in the Mary Garden-Cleofonte Campanini company in Chicago, was off-stage as the shepherd boy in Tosca.
A well-known story, which I’ve heard in several variations, tells of Mary Garden “passing the mantle”. As related by Peter G. Davis,
[Swarthout] must have seemed like a bit of a mouse . . . Still, she was a pretty mouse, and Garden, as usual, must have sensed something special, even if Mary couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. “Swarthout!” she suddenly cried one day at rehearsal for no apparent reason. “Where’s Swarthout?” The young singer rushed in and meekly prepared to be scolded for God knows what. Ripping her mantle in two and extending half of it to the trembling tyro, Garden grandly proclaimed, “You shall be the next great Carmen!”In another telling, the mantle was actually the shawl Garden always used in Carmen, and Swarthout in later years used her half of the shawl as a drape over the piano in her Connecticut home.
After several years singing minor roles in Chicago, Swarthout made her Metropolitan debut in 1929 as La Cieca in La Gioconda. She performed there until 1945, singing 22 roles, including several trouser roles (which showed off her figure), the 1930 premiere of Sadko by Rimsky-Korsakov and the 1934 premiere of Merry Mount by Howard Hanson, but Carmen became her signature role. It was a controversial Carmen, not because, as was the case with some earlier Carmens, it was too earthy, too sexy, too vulgar, etc., but because it seemed, after the interpretations of Calvé, Ponselle and Garden, rather bland. Virgil Thomson noted that Swarthout’s gypsy “never left the country club.” Her immaculately tailored ensemble was by the great couturier Valentina. The look lead Peter G. Davis to note, “This well-bred Carmen could possibly be tempted by another martini, but never by Don José.”
When she first appeared as Carmen in 1939, the general public approved, but critics apparently didn’t much like her portrayal. The singing was undeniably gorgeous, but many apparently thought the interpretation weak and the costumes too elegant for the gypsy. Even the RCA Victor recording in 1941 (featured here) carries a page defending the interpretation. According to that treatise, Swarthout carefully studied the Mérrimée novel and found the gypsy to be somewhat indifferent and even sleepy. In designing the make-up, she made her complexion dark, following the description of the gypsy as having “skin the color of old leather.” On stage, she allowed herself to be thrown about by Don José and Escamillo, and her “utter languidness as she leans seductively against a chair, table or building wall . . . creates a perfect background when action is required for the gypsy’s fiery temperamental outbursts.” And the costumes? Swarthout notes that “Carmen has, for some time, maintained a lucrative racket as a come-on girl for the smuggler’s gang. She is working in the cigarette factory only as a spy and therefore, she is considerably better dressed than her fellow factory workers.”
From about 1940, Swarthout became increasingly active as a concert artist, continuing until heart disease forced her retirement in 1954.
