Famous Singers of To-day and Yesterday

ILLUSTRATED
Boston L. C. Page and Company (Incorporated) 1898
Copyright, 1898 By L. C. Page and Company (INCORPORATED) Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, U. S. A.
It has been the desire of the author to give, in a book of modest dimensions, as complete a record as possible of the Famous Singers from the establishment of Italian Opera down to the present day. The majority are opera singers, but in a few cases oratorio and concert singers of exceptional celebrity have been mentioned also.
To give complete biographical sketches of all singers of renown would require a work of several large volumes, and all that can be attempted here is to give a mere bird's-eye view of those whose names exist as singers of international repute.
Concerning singers of later times, who have risen to fame since those works were compiled, such items have been used as could be found in the newspapers and magazines of their day, and the information is of necessity imperfect. It is nevertheless hoped that the table may be of some use as carrying the history of famous singers some years beyond anything hitherto published in book form, and it has been the desire of the author to make the book interesting alike to student and amateur.
Contemporary with her was Katharine Tofts, an English woman, for an account of whom we are indebted to Colley Cibber, the great critic and playwright. She was a very beautiful woman with an exquisitely clear, sweet voice. Her career was short, for, after having achieved a tremendous success in one of her parts, she became demented, and, though eventually cured, she never returned to the stage. There was a lively rivalry between the two singers, which furnished gossip for the town.
Other singers of this period were Lavinia Fenton, who became the Duchess of Bolton, and who is chiefly remarkable for having been the original Polly in Gay's Beggar's Opera; Marthe le Rochois, who sang many of Lulli's operas,—a woman of ordinary appearance but wonderful magnetism; Madame La Maupin, one of the wildest, most adventurous and reckless women ever on the stage; and Caterina Mingotti, a faultless singer, of respectable habits. Mingotti was seized with the fatal ambition to manage opera, and soon reached the verge of bankruptcy. She contrived, however, to earn enough by singing during the succeeding five years to support her respectably in her old age.