An incident of her early career in Paris carried with it a certain amount of romance. A young Frenchman bribed her cabman to take her to a certain restaurant after the opera, where he and his friends were waiting to invite her to supper. Through the vigilance of her mother the plan was frustrated,[{218}] but the story of the incident reached America, and came to the ears of a young man who had been an early playmate of the prima donna, and whose affection had grown stronger as time passed on. He went over to Paris, and challenged the young Frenchman to mortal combat. The Frenchman acknowledged the irreproachable character of Mlle. Van Zandt, but expressed himself as being quite at the service of the gentleman for any amount of fighting. Details of the fight are not on file.
Miss Van Zandt was born in Texas, where her father owned a ranch, and her childhood was spent in the enjoyment of the free life of the plains. Her family later removed to New York, and then to London. She met Adelina Patti, who was so pleased with her voice that she gave her every encouragement, and is said to have called her her successor. But there have been so many successors of Patti![{219}]
A few years after Miss Van Zandt's début, an amusing rivalry sprang up between her and another young American soprano, Emma Nevada. So bitter was the hostility, that one evening, when Miss Van Zandt was taken ill suddenly during the performance, her friends went so far as to declare that she had been drugged by the adherents of Miss Nevada. Such little quarrels are frequent among prima donnas, and are doubtless largely engineered by the newspapers, whose appetite for the sensational is enormous.
On April 27, 1898, at the mayoralty of the Champs Elysées district in Paris, Marie Van Zandt was married to Petrovitch de Tcherinoff, a Russian state councillor, and professor at the Imperial Academy of Moscow, after which it was announced that she would retire from the stage.[{220}]
CHAPTER VII.
PRIMA DONNAS OF THE EIGHTIES.
To every opera-goer of the past ten years the name of Nordica has become almost as familiar as that of Patti was during the last generation. Nordica, or rather, Giglia Nordica, was the name assumed by Lillian Norton when she made her début on the operatic stage. She was born in Farmington, Me., and at the age of fifteen, giving great promise as a singer, she entered the New England Conservatory in Boston, Mass., where she studied voice under John O'Neil. Three years later she graduated from the Conservatory with honors. She was remarkable for her beauty and amiability as much as for her voice, which was a soprano of the[{221}] purest kind. During her years of study at the Conservatory she gained much experience by singing in church and in concerts, and for a time she accompanied Samuel R. Kelley's Tableaux d'Art Company, receiving for her services as vocalist the modest compensation of five dollars an evening.
On leaving the Conservatory, she was invited to sing in concerts in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, St. Louis, and New York, where she took leading parts in the oratorios of "Elijah," "Creation," "Messiah," etc. In 1873 she was engaged for a concert tour in England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, and France, during which her repertoire consisted of classical music only. During this tour she sang at the Crystal Palace, near London, and at the Trocadero in Paris. She then went to Milan, where she studied opera under Signor Sangiovanni, and made her operatic début at Brescia, in "Traviata."[{222}]