Marjorie Lawrence

The spirited dramatic soprano Marjorie Lawrence was becoming an increasingly important figure in Wagnerian circles when she was stricken with polio in 1941. The misfortune was made all the more poignant by Lawrence's vaunted athleticism which previously had encouraged her to appear with a real horse in Götterdämmerung, riding it into the flames as Wagner had envisioned. Her attempts to return to the stage were thwarted by certain Metropolitan patrons who found the sight of a singer not fully mobile "unseemly." Thus, her post-attack suitability for such roles as Isolde and Venu...