Macbeth, Florence Mary (1889–1966)

Mankato-born Florence Macbeth won international acclaim as an operatic soprano during the 1910s and 1920s. Known as "the Minnesota nightingale," Macbeth made hundreds of concert and recital appearances during her career. She toured the U.S. with the Chicago Opera Company for fourteen years before retiring from singing in the 1930s.

Florence Macbeth was born in Mankato in 1889 to Charles J. Macbeth and Alice A. Monfort Macbeth. She attended elementary school in Mankato and high school at St. Mary's Hall, an Episcopalian school for girls in Faribault. She graduated in 1907. During her formative years, her singing voice developed as she studied with voice teacher and impresario Nettie Snyder.

In about 1909, Macbeth's parents took her east to enroll at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. On the way they stopped at a friend's home, where she was asked to sing. Yeatman Griffith, an eminent voice teacher who was at the gathering, heard her and asked to become her paid instructor and mentor. Macbeth's parents agreed. She studied with him in the U.S. and in 1912 she, Griffith, and her parents traveled to Europe. She made her concert debut in July 1912 in Scheveningen, the Netherlands, and her European operatic debut in 1913 in Darmstadt, Germany.

After returning to the United States, Macbeth was engaged by the Chicago Grand Opera Company. On January 14, 1914, she made her American debut as Rosina in "The Barber of Seville" by Gioachino Rossini. She sang with that company for the next fourteen years.

During that period, Macbeth traveled extensively. She made concert and recital appearances, including a month-long tour in 1920 with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. The tour took her westward across Canada and then back eastward across the northern U.S.to Minnesota. She became known as the "Minnesota Nightingale". By 1926 she had made over 1500 appearances, including many with the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois during its summer seasons.

Around 1929 Macbeth's career began to ebb. She did not renew her contract with the Chicago Opera for the 1929 season. Her star had risen at about the same time as that of a number of coloratura sopranos with whom she was unable to compete. She developed a throat infection in the early 1930s—an illness that removed her for a time from the stage. She also suffered considerable financial losses due to the 1929 stock market crash. After singing for short stints with other U.S. opera companies, she ended her career at its highest point, in the late 1930s.

Macbeth married Edward Whitwell, a British former military officer, in 1922. He died in 1942 at the couple's home in California. In 1947 Macbeth met James M. Cain, the well-known author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and other novels. In September 1947 they married and moved to Maryland, Cain's home state. They lived there quietly, making occasional short trips in connection with Cain's writing.

Macbeth died in Maryland on May 5, 1966. She is buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Mankato.