Lillian Norton (b. December 12, 1857 Farmington, ME d. May 10, 1914 Batavia, Java, Indonesia) performed under the stage name Giglio Nordica, or simply "Nordica". She frequently signed herself, "Lillian Nordica". Nordica was one of the greatest operatic divas of her time. She debuted as Elvira in Don Giovanni, performed at Teatro Manzoni in Milan, Italy in 1879 and by the 1890's was frequently associated with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Barely a dozen of her audio recordings survive, mostly Wagnerian, although critics felt the recordings, in general, did not very faithfully reproduce her voice. Nordica was married three times, but had no children. Nordica died of pneumonia after a shipwreck.
Blakemore (1976) provided an apocryphal anecdote concerning George Howe, naturalist of Norway, Maine: "Taking up a book on pearls and other gems written by the noted gem expert, Dr. George Frederick Kunz of Tiffany's, he opened it to a full page illustration of Maine's own, the singer Nordica, wearing the pearl necklace which always completed her costumes in her appearances all over the world. Mr. Howe felt sure some, or all, of the pearls had come from Maine." In the late 1890's and early 1900's, Pearls were widely fished all across the USA, including in the Moosehead Lake area and in the Oxford County area of Maine. Unfortunately, Blakemore (1976) is one of the most error-of-fact-ridden works ever printed concerning mineralogy, not just Maine mineralogy. See Wintringham (2000).
Multi-strand pearl necklaces were, indeed, Nordica's trademark: sometimes three strands, also four strands. The two illustrations of Nordica's pearls in Kunz and Stevenson's (1908), The Book of the Pearl, show magnificent multistrand pearl necklaces, most assuredly of the finest pearls. There is no suggestion available that even one of these hundreds of individual pearls was from Maine freshwater mussels. The claim of the Maine origin of the pearls was certainly made by Blakemore (1976) and typical of misquotes and misstatements made in her works, although Howe may have reasonably spoke of having found pearls in Oxford County, himself, and may have spoken of Nordica, as a Maine native, who enjoyed pearls. George Kunz did travel to Norway, Maine to purchase pearls, tourmaline, etc, from Howe and his youth group probably actually purchasing pearls as early as 1901, but the destination usage of their pearls is unrecorded and these pearls may have been anonymously mixed with pearls from the Mississippi Valley, etc., although Howe had received offers of over $500 for one of his pearls from Buckfield. |
