As with London buses, one waits for ages for a film based on the life of that vocal phenomenon Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944), and then two arrive simultaneously. Add to the mix Maggie Smith's Miss Shepherd in The Lady in the Van and it seems to be open season on eccentric ladies of a certain age with thwarted musical ambitions.

Florence Foster Jenkins, who favoured Mme Jenkins or even sometimes Lady Florence, was born into a prominent, wealthy Pennsylvania family. Eloping at a young age, she entered into a brief, disastrous marriage with a ne'er-do-well who, it seems, infected her with syphilis, which may account for her increasingly outlandish behavior. She abandoned her husband and eventually ended up in New York where she became a stalwart of several of the many women's clubs that were so much a part of the metropolis's social world. She produced and staged abridged opera productions and eventually founded her own club, which she named after Verdi.