Music
Marjorie Lawrence
Inducted 1996
Internationally acclaimed Metropolitan Opera soprano whose remarkable life story — including her triumph over polio — inspired the Oscar-winning film Interrupted Melody.
Marjorie Florence Lawrence CBE was an Australian dramatic soprano, particularly noted as an interpreter of Richard Wagner’s operas. She was the first Metropolitan Opera soprano to perform the immolation scene in Götterdämmerung by riding her horse into the flames as Wagner had intended. She was afflicted by polio from 1941. Lawrence later served on the faculty of the School of Music at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.