Have you ever watched a performance where you felt embarrassed for the person in the spotlight?
It’s even worse when the person that’s messing up is you on stage. Every hiccup is magnified, and every missed beat, every mispronounced word, every forgotten lyric is broadcast to a smirking audience. You just want to vanish—evaporate into a mist and die.
But what if you’re oblivious to the fact that your public performance is no good?
Enter stage left : Florence Foster Jenkins.
Florence was one of the most famous singers of her time, but for all the wrong reasons. She performed regularly in her own club, as well the Waldorf Astoria and other establishments in New York. She eventually went on to perform at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in 1944.
She inherited a vast fortune but did not inherit a beautiful voice, though this didn’t stop her from singing opera recitals in public. Florence butchered arias by Strauss and Mozart through her inability to hit the right notes and was completely oblivious to her vocal deficiencies.
Which begs the question. Why didn’t her family or friends pull her aside and tell her the truth? Were they all selectively tone deaf?
Audiences didn’t mind, because it became very fashionable to listen to Florence Foster Jenkins massacre every song she attempted to sing.
Cosme McMoon—her pianist—claimed the audience approved of Florence wholeheartedly and tried not to hurt her feelings by outright laughing.
“So they developed a convention that whenever she came to a particularly excruciating discord or something like that where they had to laugh, they burst into these salvos of applause and whistles.
The noise was so great that they could laugh at liberty.”
Medical reasons for Tone Deafness
Dr Melvyn Ball in the Journal of Alzheimer’s disease offers a scientific hypothesis for her “dysmusia” (tune- deafness), of which she was quite likely unaware.
When she was young, Florence showed a real aptitude for music. At the tender age of 8 she gave her first piano concert and was considered a musical prodigy. However, when she became an adult, her vocal performances fell well short of being pitch perfect.
Florence was rumoured to have caught syphilis from her unfaithful husband, Frank Jenkins. The medical treatment prescribed during her time involved taking doses of mercury and arsenic.
Dr Ball proposes Florence Foster Jenkin’s inability to sing on key reflects either of two medical problems.
Her syphilis might have affected parts of the brain crucial for detecting when particular notes in a melody are out of tune or key. A structural disconnection may have occurred between the frontal area of her brain and the posterior auditory region.
Dr Ball quotes Dr Kevin Mitchell from his treatise, The Neuroscience of Tone Deafness. According to Mitchell, “The brains of people with amusia can detect discordant notes just fine—they are simply not aware of it. Their brain knows but their mind does not.”
The use of mercury could itself have been neurotoxic as well, slowly poisoning her brain.
Either way her true friends should have spoken up.
We all need people in our lives who are not afraid to stand up and speak the truth, especially when we are blinded by our own ambition or sin.
King David is no exception. We remember his youthful exploits as shepherd boy, fighting off wild bears and hungry lions to rescue his sheep. And who can forget his infamous battle against the mighty Philistine giant—Goliath.
At the peak of his career as King and man of war, he conquers his enemies, seizing plunder, amassing wealth and expanding his territories. He embodies worldly success. David is a national hero.
Such prosperity and success rarely lasts. While Joab—his military commander—and his soldiers are waging war against the Ammonites, David remains in Jerusalem, dealing with administrative matters and running the nation. One late afternoon, he walks out on to the palace rooftop to catch the evening breeze.
The King scans the horizon, watching the sunset bathe the hills and valleys of his kingdom in golden light. The dips and sways of the landscape calm his overworked mind.
He glances down to find a beautiful woman on the rooftop next door taking a bath. He gulps at the sweep and roll of her curves.
And we all know what happened next.
Not content with his own wives and everything else the Lord had given him, David commits adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. She falls pregnant and David is no doubt the father, because Uriah has been out on the battlefront for months.
David attempts to cover it up by recalling Uriah from active duty under the guise that military men require rest and recreation. For what red-blooded man wouldn’t rush home to the welcoming arms of his wife? Yet, Uriah will not enjoy the blessings of marital life while his fellow warriors are out on the battlefield. Uriah is too noble and disciplined for that behaviour.
His plan gone awry, David arranges for Uriah to return to the front lines, in the hottest part of the battle to guarantee Uriah’s death. David’s plan succeeds and a good man meets his demise.
Once the mourning period is over, David takes Bathsheba to be his wife.
He’s gotten away with first degree murder. Or has he? He had the rest of the world fooled, but not God.
At the risk of losing his own head for declaring the truth, Nathan the prophet steps forward to bring the King a message from the Lord.
Nathan presents a parable involving a wealthy man—whose riches were borne from the backs of sheep, goats and oxen—and a poor man—who owned but one little lamb.
The poor man nurtured the lamb, feeding it with food from his own table. He and his children adored the lamb, they played with it, and slept with it. The lamb was their pet, and a beloved part of their family.
An unexpected visitor came to visit the rich man. Instead of killing one of his own sheep to prepare as food for his guest, the rich man seized the poor man’s lamb. His servant butchered the lamb, and prepared the succulent meat to feed the rich man’s guest.
King David’s anger is fueled by memories of simpler days, when he was a shepherd boy raising lambs from birth, protecting them from harm’s way, tenderly feeding them and loving them as pets.
Projecting his anger at the rich man, David exclaims, “As the LORD lives, the man who did this must perish! He must pay for the lamb four times over, because he did this thing and had no compassion.”
The prophet replied, “You are the man!”
The prophet Nathan’s cleverly composed words shatter David’s heart and expose his grievous sin.
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;
And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, O would moreover given unto thee such and such things.
Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? Thou has killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and has slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. 2 Samuel 12:7-9
God holds men and women in positions of authority to higher levels of accountability. They are leaders wielding powerful influence.
Even those in our community who are not believers, hold Christians to higher levels of accountability.
We understand that David repented of his wrongdoing and received God’s forgiveness. He penned Psalm 51 sometime after Nathan had confronted him about his sin with Bathsheba.
God requires truth in the inward parts, because God is a God of truth. He is also our truest friend. He loves us too much to allow sin to corrupt and damage us.
Just like King David, we must turn from anything that is sinful, harmful and destructive and cry out to God for mercy.
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Psalm 51:1-2
Bibliography
Author unspecified, 2021, ‘Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)’, History vs Hollywood, Retrieved 27 February 2022 from
https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/florence-foster-jenkins/
Ball, M. 2016, ‘The Cognitive Basis for Florence Foster Jenkins’ “Tone Deafness”, JAD Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Retrieved 27 February 2022 from
https://www.j-alz.com/content/cognitive-basis-florence-foster-jenkins-tone-deafness
Burton-Hill, C. 2016, ‘Why Florence Foster Jenkins was the world’s worst singer’, BBC Culture, Retrieved 27 February 2022 from
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160504-why-florence-foster-jenkins-was-the-worlds-worst-singer
Franscesconi, G, 2021, ‘Remembering Florence Foster Jenkins’, Carnegie Hall, Retrieved 27 February 2022 from
https://www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Articles/2020/07/09/Remembering-Florence-Foster-Jenkins
Roat, A, 2020, ‘Why was Nathan the Prophet so important to King David?’, Bible Study Tools, Retrieved 27 February 2022 from
Tucker, R. 2013, The Biographical Bible, Baker Books, Michigan.
Smalley, G. and Trent, J. 2006, The Language of Love, Tyndale House Publishers, Illinois.
