Margaret Huston

Huston, Margaret

Margaret Huston (b Houghston). Mezzo-soprano, teacher, b Toronto ca 1878, d near Greenwich, Conn, 1 Aug 1942. She was an elder sister of the actor Walter Huston. She studied in Europe and in 1903 began a career as a recitalist, gaining particular esteem in England and America as an interpreter of Wolf and Debussy. She gave a 'homecoming concert' in Toronto 26 Nov 1903, appeared at Massey Hall 6 Nov 1907 and 8 Dec 1910, and sang at the TCM 30 Oct 1912. After her New York debut in 1911 the Musical Courier reported: 'Her art is diversified and multiform. It is an admixture of magnetism, science, knowledge, skill, observation, and that indefinable something called personality'. In 1915 she married William T. Carrington and retired from singing. In later years she lectured, coached (John Barrymore was a diction pupil), and supported philanthropies. After Carrington's death in 1931 she married the famed scenic designer Robert Edmond Jones.