Glorious!

Florence Foster Jenkins was the eccentric American woman who couldn’t sing but who became a cult figure in the 1940’s and ended up singing and filling up Carnegie Hall. She became known as the “soprano of the sliding scale”. Singing joyously offkey, all the while believing that she had perfect pitch, Florence herself said, “The world first heard my voice in 1912, the year the Titanic went down.” Discovering in a car accident that she could hit F sharp several notes above high C, she continued to access the note onstage by striking her forehead abruptly in an instant-recall of the collision. And, unwittingly, adding some spice to the musical stew, Florence donned outlandish costumes that frequently threatened to upstage her already unforgettable vocal pyrotechnics. Peter Quilter’s Glorious! is the story of this amazing woman.