Florence Foster Jenkins was dubbed the "world's worst singer."
When we hear that someone performed at a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, we generally understand that to mean the person has talent. Carnegie Hall has long been seen as the epitome of "making it" in the New York music world, but one woman's story of selling out Carnegie Hall turns that entire idea on its head.
Florence Foster Jenkins was a terrible singer. She sang off key, her voice was shrill, and she was considered the "world's worst singer." And yet, she sold out concerts repeatedly in the early 1940s. A self-professed coloratura soprano, Jenkins sang famous opera pieces and even made recordings of some of them (which you can find on Spotify), and her singing is objectively terrible.
So how did she get to where she was if she sang so poorly? According to the story told by music teacher David Hartley, it was essentially a combination of being a New York musical socialite and simply embracing the fact that people were entertained by her bad singing.
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Jenkins grew up in a wealthy family and was a piano prodigy as a child, even performing at the White House for President Rutherford B. Hayes. She wanted to study in Europe, but here parents wouldn't let her. So, she ran away at 14 and married 30-year-old Francis Thornton Jenkins. Her father cut her off, she contracted syphilis, her marriage didn't last, and she ended up living in Philadelphia an all but destitute single woman.
She taught piano to make ends meet, but an arm injury in her late 20s ended any dreams she had of becoming a concert pianist. So she turned to singing instead—except she couldn't sing.
She moved to New York with her mother, who supported her musical ambitions, and began taking singing lessons. When her father died, she and her mother inherited a significant amount of wealth, giving her financial security. She joined women's clubs and music clubs and soon became a respected member of the musical elite in Manhattan, organizing concerts and other musical events. She founded a musical club herself that nurtured other musical artists and became a much respected musical director.
Florence Foster Jenkins performed to a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall on October 25, 1944.Public domain
People in her circle who knew she was taking singing lessons began asking her to perform at her club. She obliged, which led to a combination of loyal members praising her and pretty much everyone quietly laughing at her. The more she performed, the more members would bring guests just to hear the "worst singer in the world." Word spread, and so did Jenkins' popularity.
The recordings she made in the early 1940s began circulating around the city, confirming that the rumors about her terrible voice were true. So what did she do? She put together a concert at Carnegie Hall, the most prestigious venue in New York. Tickets sold out in just two hours. A thousand people who couldn't get tickets were turned away at the door.
Carnegie Hall's main auditorium seats nearly 3,000 people.Diplocult/Wikimedia Commons
She put on a dramatic performance with spectacular costumes, dancing, and of course her tone-deaf singing. The review in the New York Sun wrote, "Much of her singing was hopelessly lacking in any semblance of pitch. But the further a note was from its proper elevation, the more the audience laughed and applauded."
The question is, did she know she was that bad?
"There's no way she could not have known," acclaimed voice teacher Bill Schuman told NPR. "No one is that unaware, especially a person who has developed so much of her time and resources to helping young, really good singers."
Schuman himself had been trained by a singer Jenkins had supported, and that teacher had told him that Jenkins was in on the joke. "She loved the audience reaction and she loved singing," he said. "But she knew."
Others aren't so sure about that, but does it really matter? Clearly, Jenkins was happy about singing for an audience, whatever the reason they came to hear her. In fact, the quote attributed to her sums up her motto we can all take to heart: “People may say that I can’t sing, but no one can ever say that I didn’t sing.”
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Jenkins had a heart attack just five days after the Carnegie Hall performance and died the following month. But at least she fulfilled her lifelong dream of musical renown in perhaps the strangest way possible. She also became the subject of a 2016 film starring Meryl Streep, so clearly her voice struck a chord throughout history—even if it was an off-key one.