Born as Florence Foster, in Pennsylvania, Jenkins received music lessons as a child, and expressed a desire to go abroad to study music. When her father refused to pay the bills, she eloped with Frank Thornton Jenkins, a doctor who became her husband, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the two divorced in 1902). There she earned a living as a teacher and pianist.
Upon her father's death in 1909, Jenkins inherited a sum of money allowing her to take up a singing career. She became involved in the musical life of Philadelphia, founding and funding the Verdi Club, took singing lessons, and began to give recitals, her first in 1912.
Jenkins' unique voice brought her a good deal of public attention. Judging from her recordings, she was barely capable of holding a note, had quite a limited range and a poor rhythmic sense - her audiences loved her for amusement, rather than musical, value. Nonetheless, she was tremendously popular in her unconventional way, and on October 25, 1944 she played a sell-out concert at Carnegie Hall.
Despite her patent lack of ability, Jenkins was firmly convinced of her greatness. She compared herself favourably to the renowned sopranos Frieda Hempel and Luisa Tetrazzini, and dismissed the laughter which often came from the audience during her performances as coming from her rivals consumed by "professional jealousy". She was aware of her critics, however, saying "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing."
The music Jenkins tackled in her recitals was a mixture of the standard operatic repertoire by the likes of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Strauss (all of them well beyond her technical ability), lieder (including works by Johannes Brahms and Joaquín Valverde's "Calvelitos", a favourite encore), and songs composed by herself or her accompanist, Cosme McMoon. She often wore elaborate costumes, sometimes appearing in wings and tinsel, and, for "Calvelitos", throwing flowers into the audience while fluttering a fan and sporting more flowers in her hair.
Two CDs of Jenkins' recordings have been issued, The Glory (????) of the Human Voice (RCA Victor) and Even MORE Glory (????) of the Human Voice (Russell Recordings). (The "????"s are part of the titles.) In 2001 a play about Jenkins by Chris Ballance had a run at the Edinburgh Fringe.
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