ADELINA PATTI.
Kankakee, Ill.
Decide whether Adelina Patti is a native of this country, and settle a dispute. Also, please tell her true maiden name and the main facts of her life.
Cymbeline.
Answer.—Adelina Patti’s real name before her marriage was Adele Juana Maria Patti. She is a native of Spain, being born at Madrid April 9, 1843. She inherited her talent to some degree from her mother, Mme. Barilli Patti, a prima donna of no mean reputation. It is stated that she sang “Norma” at the Grand Theater, Madrid, on the evening before Adele’s birth, and, as she lost much of the power and sweetness of her voice after that event, she always maintained that it had gone from her into the child. Adele has been claimed as an American, because the family came to this country the next year after her birth, and her brilliant fame dawned upon her in New York City. At the age of 9 she made her first appearance before the public, and made the tour of Canada with Strakosch and Ole Bull. She made her debut in New York City March 3, 1854, at Paul Jullien’s concert, in the City Assembly rooms. Then she accompanied Gottschalk, the great pianist, to the West Indies. It was at this time that she sung in costume with Signor Barilli at Havana the duet in the “Barber of Seville” with such effect that the audience became excited to such a pitch and clamored so wildly for her to reappear that she ran away in a fright, and nothing could persuade her to return. Returning to New York she was more popular than ever. It was in November of 1859 that the managers of the Academy of Music, New York, after a long period of unprofitable engagements which threatened to end in financial ruin, brought forward Adelina Patti as Lucia. The result was an immense success. From that time she was the pet of the metropolis.
She made her debut in London as Amina in “La Somnambula” in 1861. In England and on the Continent she soon won her way to the first rank among prima donnas. Devotees of the opera, of all ranks, showered favors upon her. The Emperor of Russia, in 1870, conferred on her the Order of Merit. Her voice is an unusually high soprano of rich, bell-like quality, and remarkable evenness of tone, to which qualities she adds purity of style and high artistic finish. Equally at home in the tenderness of deep passion and the sprightly vivacity of light comedy, she has also sung with success in oratorio. She was married in London July 29, 1868, to the Marquis de Caux, an almost impecunious scion of the old French nobility. It was an unhappy alliance and has ended in a divorce granted by the French courts to the Marquis, in 1876. According to French law she is not entitled to marry, but, nevertheless, she now claims to be legally married to Nicolini.
VOTING—RIGHTS AND RESTRICTIONS.
Mound, La.