A Stitch In Time

ACTRESS GRACE KELLY was not the first Yankee to become a princess of Monaco after marrying Prince Rainier in 1956. The heiress Alice Heine, born in Louisiana, had already married the Explorer Prince Albert I nearly 60 years earlier. Both women played important roles in boosting Monaco’s arts and culture, but it was a gay American cousin-by-marriage who would help establish Monaco as a world capital of dance in the early 20th century.

Winnaretta Singer was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1865, the twentieth(!) of 24 children sired by Isaac Singer, inventor of the home sewing machine and self-made millionaire. When Singer’s Parisian-born second wife, and Winnaretta’s mother, Isabelle, became homesick, the Singer family moved from New York to Paris.

Winnaretta recognized early on that as a gay woman in Europe she would need a husband to secure her social status and protect her inheritance. At the age of 22 she married Prince Louis de Scey-Montbéliard, an aristocrat with a good family name although penniless. On their wedding night, the bride reportedly climbed atop an armoire and threatened to kill the groom with an umbrella if he came near her. Five years later, in 1892, the marriage was annulled by the Vatican.

A year after the annulment, the 28-year-old married the openly gay 59-year-old Prince Edmond de Polignac with the blessings of Pope Leo XIII, who had just overseen her annulment. Polignac was a French aristocrat and amateur composer who had lost his entire fortune in the stock market. He was also uncle to Prince Pierre of Monaco - the father of Prince Rainier III and future father-in-law of Grace Kelly.

Edmond and Winnaretta, now officially a princess, shared a mutual passion for art and music (though not for each other) and both were delighted with their “arrangement” which remained a very happy partnership until his death in 1901.

Theirs was a mariage blanc (unconsummated) or a lavender marriage (a union between a gay man and a lesbian) and both continued to have other relationships, discreet and not so. Winnaretta had affairs with numerous women, often married ones, never making attempts to conceal them. One time, an affronted husband of one of her lovers once stood outside the princess’ Venetian palazzo, declaring, “If you are half the man I think you are, you will come out here and fight me.”

Together Edmond and Winnaretta, herself an accomplished painter and musician, established a salon in their stylish Parisian home which became an avant-garde haven for the most brilliant artists of that time. Here they held court, entertaining, and often bankrolling, young composers, writers, and painters. Their frequent guests included Debussey, Ravel, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Claude Monet, Marcel Proust, Cole Porter, and Isadora Duncan, Winnaretta’s sister-in-law, who famously died in a car on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice in 1927 when her long silk scarf got caught in the back wheel.

Another frequent guest was Sergei Diaghilev…impresario of the Ballets Russes. At the turn of the 20th century, ballet was not considered as a separate art form but merely as a side act or minor animation for opera. Under Diaghilev’s leadership, the Ballets Russes began its own revolution, changing the face of modern dance by combining music, dance, and the visual arts into avant-garde performances throughout Europe and the Americas.

After her husband's death, Winnaretta continued her generous patronage of the Ballets Russes, allowing them to create and perform original ballet classics and prosper even during times of financial crisis, which, for Diaghilev and the itinerate troupe, was often.

Winnaretta’s greatest gift to the Ballets Russes was securing a home for the troupe in Monaco, which became their creative workshop for two decades. Her husband’s nephew Prince Pierre de Polignac had married Princess Charlotte of Monaco (they had two children, Princess Antoinette and Prince Rainier) and both were eager to boost the country’s cultural profile as they worked to reinvent the sleepy little Principality as an elegant resort and gambling center. Inviting Pierre to her palazzo in Venice, Winnaretta convinced the prince to invite the troupe to settle in Monte Carlo, giving the dancers the financial and creative stability necessary to establish itself as the most influential dance troupe of the 20th century.

Winnaretta’s gift to Monaco also placed the Principality at the center of modern dance, an important legacy not lost on future princes and princesses. In 1975, Princess Grace and Prince Rainier launched a world-class Academy of Dance. Ten years later, their daughter Princess Caroline of Hanover inaugurated Monaco’s own renowned national company, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. Today, Monaco sponsors the prestigious Monaco Dance Forum and Festival where young aspiring dancers learn and network with the greatest names in dance.

By Annette Anderson

Contributor

Annette Anderson is the president of the MonacoUSA Association and a key figure behind the iconic Stars’N’Bars, now transformed into the Marius restaurant. A Forbes contributor and writer for The Monegasque, she’s known for her vibrant leadership, advocacy for inclusivity, and fostering U.S.-Monaco relations, notably through events honoring Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly’s legacy.