The new Civic Opera also fell heir to Mary Garden as musical director as well as all of the costumes, scenery, and other resources of the defunct Opera Association.
It has been suggested that the story was influenced by Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem Eden Bower, the singer Mary Garden and also Pierre Louys's novel Aphrodite.
During her career, Cavalieri sang with other prominent singers, including Giuseppe Anselmi, Mary Garden (the world premiere of Massenet's Chérubin, 1905), Mattia Battistini, Titta Ruffo, Feodor Chaliapin, Nikolay Figner, Antonio Scotti, Vanni Marcoux, Giuseppe Zanatello, Tito Schipa, and the French tenor Lucien Muratore, whom she married in 1913 after his divorce from soprano Marguerite Bériza.
Such plants may include laurel trees, strawberries, ladyslippers, lilies of the valley, peonies, violets, irises and roses, all of which are identified as symbolic and significant in the story of Mary as recounted in the Bible and other Christian stories.
Madison Square Garden | Covent Garden | Queen Mary | Mary | Mary, Queen of Scots | Mary I of England | Mary J. Blige | Mary Shelley | Mary Poppins | Mary Pickford | Mary of Teck | RMS Queen Mary | Mary Magdalene | Mary Robinson | The Secret Garden | Mary Landrieu | Operation Market Garden | botanical garden | Assumption of Mary | The Mary Tyler Moore Show | Mary (mother of Jesus) | Mary-Kate Olsen | The Jesus and Mary Chain | Mary Chapin Carpenter | Mary Tyler Moore | Mary Stuart | Mary Hopkin | Boston Garden | Peter, Paul and Mary | New York Botanical Garden |
Many of the greatest opera stars of the era appeared with the company during its four year history; among the most notable were Nellie Melba, Lillian Nordica, Luisa Tetrazzini, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Giovanni Zenatello, Lina Cavalieri, Mary Garden, John McCormack, Lalla Miranda, Alessandro Bonci, Charles Dalmorès, Giovanni Polese, Maurice Renard, Alice Zeppilli, and Nicola Zerola.
Other famous twentieth-century singers to appear at Monte Carlo included Titta Ruffo, Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden, Tito Schipa, Beniamino Gigli, Claudia Muzio, Georges Thill, Lily Pons, and Mary McCormic.
Mary Garden, the star-power and resident genius of Civic, never happy with the new opera house, retired abruptly after a performance of Massenet's Le jongleur de Notre-Dame at the end of the 1931/2 season.