10 Facts About Mary McCormic

Mary McCormic was an American operatic soprano and a professor of opera at the University of North Texas College of Music.

For more than a decade, McCormic was among the famous sopranos in the world.

Mary McCormic was most known for her leading roles with the Paris National Opera, the Opera-Comique, the Monte Carlo Opera, the Chicago Civic Opera and headlined at the Metropolitan Opera.

Mary McCormic spent much of 1937 touring with the Kryl Symphony Orchestra.

Mary McCormic captured world intrigue with the panache of the operas she starred, all with the backdrop of being born at the end of the Gilded Age; growing up as a teenager during World War I; flourishing as an opera superstar through the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, the Jazz Age, and the Great Crash; and failing in her last two high-profile marriages in the throes of the Great Depression.

Mary McCormic was the conductor the Amarillo Civic Chorus and was a major concert promoter in the Texas Panhandle.

Mary McCormic studied music at Ouachita College, University of Arkansas and then, with the intention of becoming a lyric soprano, Northwestern University where she took vocal lessons.

In 1944, Wilfred Bain, dean of the University of North Texas College of Music, recruited Mary McCormic to create and direct an Opera Workshop.

Mary McCormic founded, defined, directed, and, when necessary, defended the school's first Opera Workshop.

In 1966, Mary McCormic retired and moved to Amarillo to make her home with her widowed sister-in-law, Mrs Odell Harris.