Adelina Patti (1843-1919)

Adelina Patti (1843-1919)

Adelina Patti was born Adela Juana Maria Patti in Madrid, Spain, on 19th February, 1843 - the fourth of six children of travelling Italian parents. Her father, Salvatore Patti, was a Sicilian who hailed from a noble family and was an accomplished tenor. Her mother, Caterina Chiesa Barilli, was a celebrated Italian opera singer under the professional name of Signora Barilli.

Whilst Adelina was still an infant her parents, fallen upon hard times in Europe, emigrated to America where there were better opportunities for a show business family. Her father became a manager of the Old Italian Opera House in New York, one of the cradles of Grand Opera on that continent. Fortune did not favour her parents however, and by the time Adelina was seven they found themselves destitute. But, in Adelina, her mother realised that they had a prodigious and marketable vocal talent. And so they put Adelina on the concert curcuit to win bread for the family. She made her debut at the Tripler Hall in New York singing arias from 'The Barber of Seville', aged only seven. She was an instant success as this, as this press clipping from the following year indicates:

The programme included a fantasia from Lucia, and a portion of the Carnival of Venice, with two or three other pieces by Mr. Jaell, which were rendered with marvellous taste and delicacy. The piano-forte is a new instrument under his finished touch. Nor should the other musical wonder, the child Adelina Patti, be forgotten. A very successful imitation of the Echo Song of Jenny Lind Was vehemently encored. New York Daily Times 25th Nov, 1851.

She became so successful that her voice was almost ruined through overwork. At the age of twelve she undertook a tour of Cuba and the Caribbean in the company of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the internationally famous pianist. Then, at the height of her childish talents, she was withdrawn from the concert room to rest her voice and complete her vocal training.

She made her full operatic debut at the age of sixteen at the New York Academy of Music on 24th November, 1859, singing Donizetti's 'Lucia di Lammermoor'. Again she was a tremendous success and during the following eighteen months she sang the heroines of all the most operas of Bellini and Donizetti and carried all before her.

Adelina made her European debut in 1861, when Frederick Gye, proprietor of the Royal Italian Opera House at Covent Garden, London, engaged her to sing "Amina" in his production of Bellini's 'Somnambula'. It was a big risk for Adelina, only just turned eighteen, to expose herself to a public that was at the time the most notoriously difficult to please in Europe. But please them she did, and from the opening night of 18th May, 1861, her reputation in England was firmly assured.

And not only in England, her remarkable voice quickly took her to the top of her profession and within a few years made her the most celebrated soprano in the world. She made Europe her main base of operations, purchasing a house in London's Clapham as her stepping-off point. She travelled far and wide across Europe and the America's, drawing large audiences to see and hear her wherever she went.

In 1862 she was invited to the White House where Abraham and Mary Lincoln were in mourning for their 11 year-old son William, who had recently died from Typhoid fever. One of the songs she sang on that ocassion was "Home Sweet Home", from the opera 'Clari' (or 'The Maid of Milan'), which would become very much associated with her name in subsequent years.

In 1868, she married Henri de Roger de Cahusac, the Marquis de Caux, Equerry to Napoleon the third of France. It was not a happy marriage, and ending in considerable bitterness, and she instead became romantically involved with the opera singer Ernest Nicolini, who had partnered her in many duets.

In 1878 she bought a large house, Craig-y-Nos, near Abercrave in the Breconshire hills of Wales, which she would call home for the remainder of her life. Nicolini took up residence there with her, although the couple were unable to marry until after Adelina's first husband consented to a divorce in 1886 (in lieu of which he received a substantial settlement).

In 1881, by now the toast of virtually every major city in Europe, she returned to the USA, and from then until 1904 would make coast to coast tours there almost annually. She was by now one of the most famous women in the world, and certainly amongst the highest paid, able to write her own contracts and always demanding payment in advance. She was beloved the World over by people of all classes, from common chamber maids to heads of state.

During her period of residence at Craig-y-Nos she used her fortune to undertake numerous construction works, dramatically extending it into her very own castle. These works included the building of new north and south wings, a winter garden, conservatory, clock tower and even the erection of a small theatre.

After Nicolini died in 1898, Adelina married again, for the third and last time, the following year. This time the groom was the Swedish born Baron Rolf Cederstrom, a naturalised Englishman some years her junior. In spite of this, Cederstrom was a somewhat austere man and put something of a curb on his wife's spending and socialising.

Adelina continued to give concerts until beyond her sixtieth birthday, although by then she was noticeably past her prime. Her last tour of the USA in 1903/04, the last of many 'farewell' tours there, was particularly disappointing, after which she went into sem-retirement, giving only the occasional concert here or there, or giving private performances in her own little theater.

In 1918, she donated the Winter Garden building to the city of Swansea, and it was dismantled and re-erected overlooking Swansea Bay, where it remains to this day as the 'Patti Pavilion' and fittingly used as a performance space. Adelina spent the last years of her life enjoying the tranquility at Craig-y-Nos, where she died from heart failure following a long illness on 27th September, 1919 - she was aged 76. Her remains were taken to France where she was buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Although known as a somewhat unadventurous singer, rarely straying from the same old set of established favourites, particularly "Home Sweet Home", which she never-the-less sang to doting audiences. But, in her youth especially, she sang with a sweet soprano that was birdlike in it's lyrical clarity. In business she was a shrewd operator, driving hard bargains in all her contracts and, once she had made her name, always insisting on money up front. Unfortunately, the only recordings ever made of Madame Patti were made late in her career when she was already long past her prime.

At the height of her career she was the most celebrated, and certainly the highest paid, vocalist in the world, guaranteed to fill houses wherever she appeared. In England she travelled in her own private luxury rail carriage, and kept a permanent suite of rooms at the Northwestern Hotel in London to use as her base in the capital. She was feted by royalty before whom she often appeared, and was the first operatic singer to made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor (1905), beating even the great Sarah Bernhardt to that distinction. She was also decorated by the Czar of Russia with the Order of Merit, and was appointed by him as "First Singer of the Court." Other European potentates showered her with jewels, decorations and social distinctions. Her sisters Carlotta and Amelia were also singers.