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Garden was born on February 20, 1874 in Aberdeen, Scotland, the daughter of Robert Davidson Garden, an engineer, and Mary Joss. Garden's father established himself in the United States and sent for his family when Garden was a child. The family lived in Brooklyn, New York, and Chicopee, Massachussets, before moving around 1888 to Chicago.
In Chicago, Garden, whose regular schooling was sporadic, began taking voice lessons when she was sixteen. She had studied violin and piano earlier and had sung before groups as a child. In 1897 her teacher, Sarah Robinson-Duff, took Garden to Paris to study and arranged for her to be sponsored by a Chicago patron. When her stipend stopped, Garden was instructed without charge by her teachers Antonio Trabadello and Lucien Fugère.
The American opera star Sibyl Sanderson invited Garden to share her home and introduced her to Albert Carré, the director of the Opéra-Comique. In 1900, Sanderson took Garden to a rehearsal of Gustave Charpentier's Louise, and Carré gave her a score of the opera, which she practiced constantly. Carré, who had heard Garden sing and had contracted with her to join the Opéra-Comique in October, asked her to attend the performance of Louise on April 13, since its star, Marthe Rioton, appeared ill. When Rioton could sing only the first two acts, Carré insisted, over the protests of the conductor, André Messager, that Garden complete the performance. She was an instant success, captivating operagoers with her clear, sweet soprano voice, blue eyes, red hair, and American accent, which sounded exotic to Parisian ears. A dedicated worker and an instinctive actress, she was endowed with beauty and a remarkable stage personality. Garden remained with the Opéra-Comique for eight years, singing Louise more than 100 times, and from the beginning she identified totally with each character she portrayed. Garden was chosen to create the role of Mélisande in Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande; indeed, Debussy had her in mind when he composed the work, which premiered on April 30, 1902. Mélisande became the role for which she is most remembered. In 1907, Garden left Paris to sing at the Manhattan Opera House for the impresario Oscar Hammerstein, who billed her as the greatest singer and actress in the world. She opened there in the American premiere of Massenet's Thaïs and again was an immediate success, although she was praised chiefly for her acting. The American premieres of Louise and Pelléas et Mélisande followed, and praise of Garden's performance, especially in the latter, was almost unqualified. In her second New York season, she sang Massenet's Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. She was the first woman to appear in the part of Jean, written for a tenor. Garden was honored by the French government for popularizing modern French opera in the United States. She nearly always sang in French, even when the other roles in an opera were sung in Italian. She returned to Paris yearly, often singing in European opera houses and learning new roles while in France. Garden created each new part with care. She planned her own stage action and chose her clothes and wigs. She sent to Brittany for the long blond hair of peasant girls for the wig she toyed with seductively as Mélisande. She also negotiated her own contracts. Insisting on doing her own dancing in the second New York production of Richard Strauss's Salome, which was staged in 1909, she asked the chief dancing teacher at the Paris Opéra to work out the "Dance of the Seven Veils" with her. The result was a sensual, suggestive dance. Salome was twice withdrawn in Chicago after two performances in response to protests concerning its sexuality and gory realism. Garden began her twenty-year career with the Chicago Opera Association in the fall of 1910 when Hammerstein sold his opera company to the directors of the Metropolitan Opera, who moved their newly acquired competition to Chicago. With Cleofonte Campanini continuing to conduct its company and with Garden its star, Chicago became the American production center of modern French opera. Traveling with the Chicago company, Garden also performed throughout the United States, including New York from 1911 to 1922. When, in 1921, the Chicago Opera Association floundered after Campanini's death, Garden was asked to head it, becoming the first woman in the world to direct a leading opera company. Her tenure, during which she continued to sing, lasted a year and made her unpopular with singers and staff. Lucien Muratore, a leading French tenor who often sang with Garden, resigned in midseason, and other singers and executives also left. Garden received so many threats that a detective was assigned to protect her. Despite these problems, her year at the helm won her the Legion of Honor and was artistically exciting; it was also expensive. The following season the association was reorganized as the Chicago Civic Opera Company. In 1925, Garden had her last outstanding personal success, in the American premiere of Franco Alfano's Risurrezione. She continued singing with the company until 1931. Garden made her home in Paris and sang occasionally until 1934. She returned to Aberdeen during World War II, and Scotland became her principal home in later years. For the five seasons between 1949 and 1954, she traveled in the United States to lecture in forty cities and to audition singers for the National Arts Foundation. With the music critic Louis Biancolli, she published an autobiography, Mary Garden's Story (1951). She defied convention, insisting on original and realistic theater emancipated from tradition. She sang few established roles, preferring modern French operas. During her thirty-one-year career, she sang thirty-four roles. Despite her innovative work and the influence she had upon the operatic repertoire during her lifetime, many of the roles she sparked grew dim when she no longer sang them. Buoyed in old age by letters from her fans, Garden died near Aberdeen.
Garden, who never married, wrote of the men in her life as well as the music. Despite liaisons and numerous suitors, she wrote that her "private life was empty" compared with the lives she lived through her operatic roles. Garden was often called a singing actress.
