Misplaced Pages

Blanche Slocum

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
American singer
Blanche Slocum
A woman with light skin and dark hair, photographed in profile, wearing a laurel-leaf headband low over her brow, and a dark scoop-necked gown, and two strands of pearlsBlanche Slocum, from a 1927 publication
BornLulu Blanche Slocum
August 30, 1885
Hesperia, Michigan, U.S.
DiedAugust 8, 1960 (age 74)
Other namesLulu B. Slocum, Blanche Ferner, Blanche Pasquale
OccupationSinger

Lulu Blanche Slocum (August 30, 1885 – August 8, 1960) was an American contralto singer based in Chicago.

Early life and education

Slocum was born in Hesperia, Michigan, and raised in Oak Park, Illinois, the daughter of Eugene Blakesly Slocum and Elizabeth Jane Ferguson Slocum. She was a protegée of Scottish singer Mary Garden, who arranged for her to study voice in Paris.

Career

Slocum taught singing at her older sister Nellie Slocum's Imperial College of Music and Dramatic Art in Chicago in 1903. She taught in Wisconsin in 1908 and 1909, gave a recital in Wausau, Wisconsin, in 1909. She was a chorus girl with the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera Company when she caught the attention of Mary Garden. She painted a watercolor portrait of Garden in 1913, in appreciation.

Slocum was studying and performing in Berlin when the United States entered World War I. After her passport was seized, she had to remain in Germany. The American consulate in Zürich eventually resolved her dilemma, and she was allowed to return to the United States in spring 1918. The Chicago Tribune and many other newspapers across the United States carried her "sensational" inside accounts of life in wartime Germany. "Here I am," she wrote, "The last American out of Germany."

Slocum was a dramatic contralto. She gave her first Chicago recital in October 1918. "Miss Slocum's voice is a contralto, inclining toward the mezzo, and is of ample compass and volume," The Musical Monitor reported afterward. "There is much in it that is beautiful and sympathetic." In the 1920s, Slocum continued performing, taught at the Chicago Music School, and painted and exhibited landscapes.

Personal life

Slocum married Adolph I. Ferner Jr. in 1906. He left her three months later, and they divorced in 1907. She married Anthony V. Pasquale in 1932. She died in 1960, at the age of 74.

References

  1. Slocum gave her birthdate as August 30, 1890 on her 1915 application for a United States passport. However, August 30, 1885 is the date given on her first marriage license application, and this date matches her age (25) as given in the 1910 federal census; via Ancestry. She was teaching voice in Chicago in 1903, which also points to a birthdate in the mid-1880s at the latest.
  2. "Oak Park is Proud of Blanche Slocum". The Inter Ocean. 1911-09-04. p. 5. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. "Mary Garden Has Protege; Sends Blanche Slocum, Chorus Girl, to Paris to Study for Opera". The New York Times. September 16, 1911. p. 7. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-11.
  4. "Miss Blanche Slocum". Wausau Pilot. 1911-09-05. p. 5. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. "Imperial College of Music and Dramatic Art (advertisement)". Birds and Nature. 14 (4): n.p. November 1903.
  6. "Concert Here Friday". Wausau Daily Herald. 1909-05-25. p. 5. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. "Concert at Tomahawk". The Merrill Daily Herald. 1908-06-12. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. "A Prophesy; Mary Garden Says that Miss Blanche Slocum Will Surprise Musical World Soon". The Merrill Daily Herald. 1911-10-11. p. 1. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. "Blanche Slocum Paints Picture of Miss Mary Garden, Who Sent Her Abroad to Study Vocal Music". The Merrill Daily Herald. 1913-01-22. p. 8. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "Miss Blanche Slocum; An Oak Park Girl Among American in Germany Who Has Made Application to Return". Wausau Pilot. 1917-02-27. p. 1. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. "Many Americans in Berlin Seeking Passports to U.S." Chicago Tribune. 1917-02-09. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. "Miss Slocum Gets Passports". The Champaign Daily News. 1918-02-12. p. 9. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. "American Singer Gets German Passport" Musical America (February 23, 1918): 3.
  14. "Narratives from the War". The American Journal of Nursing. 18 (9): 795–796. 1918. ISSN 0002-936X.
  15. "Girl Singer Home Right from Germany" Daily Tribune (May 3, 1918): 14. via Hoosier Daily Chronicles.
  16. "Germany Today! (advertisement)". The Oregonian. 1918-04-05. p. 15. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. "Mutiny Rife in Hunland, Says Blanche Slocum". Chicago Tribune. 1918-03-27. p. 7. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. "Blanche Slocum, Dramatic Contralto" (advertisement), Music News 19(April 8, 1927): 33.
  19. "In and About Chicago". The Musical Monitor. 8 (3): 129. November 1918.
  20. "Chicago Season Picking Up". Musical Digest. 8: 11. October 13, 1925.
  21. "Chicago Music School Pupils in Recital". Music News. 20: 26. June 15, 1928.
  22. "Blanche Slocum, Singer and Landscape Painter". The Musical Leader. 51: 17. January 14, 1926.
  23. Dearborn, Willie (1905-12-23). "The Whirl of Society". The Inter Ocean. p. 6. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. "Beau Ideal's Wife Sues; Mrs. Lulu Blanche Ferner of Oak Park Seeks Divorce". Chicago Tribune. 1907-06-27. p. 3. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
  25. "Blanche Slocum Pasquale (death notice)". Chicago Tribune. 1960-08-09. p. 38. Retrieved 2025-01-11 – via Newspapers.com.
Categories:
Blanche Slocum Add topic