January 1947, Hollywood (Eva's Curse)
For complete Letters from Cohoes song cycle click below.
Description
Letters From Cohoes was originally conceived for Baritone, flute, harp and string Quartet. The first movement is set in Eva Tanguay’s voice and works well dramatically for mezzo-soprano.
Eva Tanguay (1879-1947) was born in Canada and billed herself as “the girl who made vaudeville famous”. She was known for her suggestive songs and extravagant costumes. She has been likened to Madonna or Lady Gaga. Her one recording was “I Don’t Care” in 1922.
Her parents moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts in the 1880’s and she began her career as a teenager at the Cohoes Music Hall. At the age of nineteen she made her debut in New York City.
Tanguay was the highest paid woman of her day but was said to have lost more than two million dollars in the Wall Street crash of 1929. Tanguay had a reputation for outlandish behavior and was once fined $50 in Louisville, Kentucky for throwing a stagehand down a flight of stairs. She died, blind and nearly destitute, at the age of 68 in Hollywood. In 1953 Mitzi Gaynor portrayed Eva Tanguay in a fictionalized version of her life in the motion picture, The I Don’t Care Girl. Her ghost is said to still haunt Cohoes Music Hall in upstate New York.
Letters from Cohoes is a highly fictionalized, musical portrayal of Eva Tanguay’s ghost. In its original form it was scored for flute (doubling on alto flute, contrabass flute and piccolo), harp, string quartet and solo baritone. It is in four movements, taking the form of letters.
Letter 1. January 1947, Hollywood Eva’s Curse
Eva’s "Me Too" telling of abuse at the hands of a lecherous stage manager and the “accident” that Eva arranged for him.
I don’t care if the others seemed flattered.
I don’t care if your backbone was shattered.
Audio
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