Adelina Patti
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Adelina Patti (February 10, 1843 - September 27, 1919) was one of the most highly regarded opera singers of the 19th century. Giuseppe Verdi was not alone in calling her the greatest singer he ever heard.
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[edit] Origins
Patti was born Adela Juana Maria Patti to Italian parents travelling in Madrid, Spain. Her father was Sicilian and so Patti was born a subject of the King of the Two Sicilies. She later carried a French passport, as her two first husbands were French. Like many great singers, she came from a singing family. Both her parents, tenor Salvatore Patti and soprano Caterina Barilli, were singers. Her sisters Carlotta and Amalia were also singers. In her childhood the family moved to New York City: Patti grew up in The Bronx, where her family's home is still standing. Patti sang professionally from childhood, and developed into a coloratura soprano. It is believed that Patti learned much of her singing technique from her brother in law Maurice Strakosch, although later in life Patti, like many famous singers, claimed that she was entirely self-taught.
[edit] Development
Adelina Patti made her operatic début, in the title rôle of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, at the Academy of Music, New York, at age 16 in 1859.
In 1861, at the age of eighteen, she was invited to Covent Garden, to take the soprano rôle of Amina in Bellini's La Sonnambula. She had such success that she bought a house in Clapham and, using London as a base, went on to conquer the continent, performing Amina in Paris and Vienna in subsequent years with equal éclat.
In 1862 she sang Bishop's Home, Sweet Home at the White House for Abraham and Mary Lincoln, who were mourning for their son Willie, who had died of typhoid. The Lincolns were moved to tears and requested an encore. This song would became associated with Adelina Patti and she performed it many times as an encore by popular request.
Patti's career was success after success. She sang in the United States, all over Europe, including very much Russia and in South America, inspiring popular frenzy and critical raves wherever she went. Her girlish good looks made her an appealing stage presence. In her prime she reportedly had a beautiful soprano voice of birdlike purity, and she excelled in both soubrette roles like Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Rosina in Barber of Seville and famous coloratura parts like Lucia di Lammermoor and La Sonnambula, as well as lyric roles in Gounod's Faust and Romeo et Juliette.
Patti was known as a somewhat unadventurous singer, whose concert programs invariably consisted of the same old tunes, especially "Home Sweet Home", sung to adoring audiences. However, she was an effective actress in lyric rôles that called for deep emotions, like Gilda in Rigoletto, Leonora in Il Trovatore, Semiramide, and Violetta in La Traviata. As her voice matured, she took on heavier parts in operas like L'Africaine, Les Huguenots, and Aïda. Overall, though perhaps unadventurous and old-fashioned, (she sang no Verismo parts at all) her repertoire was quite large and varied.
It is said that, when she performed an aria from The Barber of Seville in front of its composer, Gioacchino Rossini, adding her own embellishments, Rossini applauded with the words, "That was wonderful - who wrote it?"
[edit] Financial Success
What made Patti great was not just her voice, but her shrewd business acumen. In her prime, she demanded to be paid $5000 a night, in gold, before the performance. No money, no Patti. Her contracts stipulated that her name be top-billed and larger than any other name in the cast. Her contracts also said that while she was "free to attend all rehearsals, she was not obligated to attend any." The famous impresario, "Colonel" Mapleson in his memoirs recalls Patti's stubborn personality and sharp business sense. She reportedly had a parrot whom she had trained to shriek, "CASH! CASH!" whenever Mapleson walked in the room. But she could get away with it because she filled the houses. Patti was a winning investment.
Although Patti ruthlessly squeezed every last dollar that she could from impresarios, she was known to be generous to the less fortunate and it was said that no one wrote Patti asking for help without getting some.
It was unfortunate that like many sopranos Patti did not know when to stop. Her last tour to the United States, in 1903, was a critical and personal failure. From then on she restricted herself to the occasional concert here or there, or to private performances at the little theater she built in her home at Craig-y-Nos.
Patti made a few phonograph recordings when she was in her 60s, at which time by all accounts her voice was past her prime but still impressive. They show a lively singing personality, and a surprisingly strong, developed chest voice and dark timbre, as well as a wonderful trill. Her diction is still excellent, and overall her records have a charm and musicality that give us a hint why at her prime she commanded the $5000 a night. There are differing opinions of to what extent the vibrato heard on some of the selections is Patti's technique or an artifact of the primitive sound recording. But Fred Gaisberg, the legendary American record-man who made them, says in his memoirs that Patti went into ecstasies when she heard the sound of her own voice for the first time, saying "At last I know what they were talking about!"
[edit] Personal life
Patti's personal life was not as successful as her professional life, although it was not as disastrous as many operatic singers'. She is thought by some to have had a dalliance with the tenor Mario, who is said to have bragged at Patti's first wedding that he had already "made love to her many times."
Patti married three times: first, in 1868, to Henri de Roger de Cahusac, marquis de Caux (1826-1889). That marriage ended in a lot of bitterness (and a large payment of money to the Marquis).
She then lived with the tenor Ernesto Nicolini for many years until, following Caux' death, she was able to marry him; that marriage lasted until his death and was seemingly happy, but Nicolini cut Patti out of his will, suggesting some tension in the last years.
Patti's last marriage, in 1899, was to a priggish, but handsome, Swedish Baron many years her junior, who severely curtailed Patti's social life. He became Patti's sole legatee and, some time later, married a woman, this time, much younger than he. Their only daughter—still alive when Mr Cone published his book, see below—thus became Adelina Patti's sole heir.
Patti had no children, but was close to her nieces and nephews. It is noteworthy that her great-grand niece and namesake is the Tony Award-winning Broadway actress and singer Patti Lupone.
In her retirement, Adelina Patti, baroness Cederström, settled in the Swansea valley in south Wales, where she purchased Craig-y-Nos Castle. In 1918, she presented the Winter Garden building from her Craig-y-Nos estate to the city of Swansea. It was re-erected and renamed the Patti Pavilion. She died at Craig-y-Nos and was buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
[edit] Bibliography
- Cone, Frederick: Adelina Patti: Queen of Hearts, New York, Hal Leonard, 2003 (A remarkable narrative of her life, with an abundance of beautiful illustrations.)
- The Reign of Patti, a minor classic written by her friend the music critic Herman Klein.
Also:
Mapleson, James Henry: The Mapleson memoirs; the career of an operatic impresario, 1858-1888. (Harold Rosenthal, Editor) New York, Appleton-Century, 1966
