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| Portrait of Adelina Patti (c. 1874) by Marcel Johann von Zadorecki |
By Cav. Charles Sant’Elia
Adelina Patti had an active and complicated personal life. She became the favorite of the French court and was received at the Tuileries by Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugènie. In this milieu, she was introduced to Henri de Roger de Cahusac, the Marquis de Caux, Equerry to the Emperor, and it was said at the urging of the Empress herself that she was persuaded to accept him as her husband. They were married at the Roman Catholic Church on Clapham Common on 29 July 1868, but the couple was unhappy and officially separated in 1877. Patti then became romantically involved with the opera singer Ernest Nicolini, with whom she had sung many duets. With her burgeoning success and official separation, she purchased the Craig-y-nos, the Welsh estate she expanded to include new wings, a clock tower, a conservatory, a winter garden and even an opera theatre. She lived at Craig-y-nos with her second and third husbands. Nicolini took up residence there with her, although the couple was unable to marry for some years until Patti obtained her divorced him in 1885 after supposedly ceding a considerable sum to him, which did not seem to impact her much as she was very wealthy even after her building projects at Craig-y-nos. She then married Nicolini on 10 June 1886 in a civil ceremony at the residence of the French Vice-consul at Swansea, in the presence of several distinguished witnesses. A religious ceremony was conducted in the small parish church of Ystradgynlais the following day. The two were considered to be completely devoted, and for years Madame Patti refused all engagements in which Nicolini was not included. Nicolini was viewed as her true love and creating the happiest period of her personal life. After he died in 1898, she married the Swedish Baron Rolf Cederström in 1899, who was 27 years her junior. Seen as both doting and controlling, the Baron was associated mostly with her years of retirement and as her executor. Cederstrom was said to be sincere in his love for Patti, but he was an austere man who curtailed her spending and social life, and most of her old friends were separated from her. Patti immersed herself deeply in local community life, giving charity concerts after largely retiring from the stage. She also sang in Welsh at the Eisteddfod in Brecon in 1889. Her staff at Crasig-y-Nos, which numbered about seventy, were devoted to her. She remained popular with the local community for her good works and the prosperity her presence brought as other celebrities and royals came to visit her at home.
Patti made her first appearance at Milan’s La Scala as Violetta on 3 November 1877. She returned to the United States for a concert tour in 1881–82, then sang in opera there for the next three seasons, earning as much as $5,000 per performance. She toured the United States again in 1881-82 and appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in the spring of 1887 and again in 1890 and 1892. Her final tour of the United States followed in 1903. She made her last appearance at Covent Garden in 1895, and her operatic farewell took place in Nice in 1897. Her official farewell concert was given at London’s Albert Hall on 1 December 1906. Her last public appearance was at a benefit concert for the Red Cross in that same hall on 20 October 1914. Patti was renowned for her execution of the roles of Zerlina, Rosina, Norina, Elvira, Martha, Adina, Gilda, Aida and Gounod’s Marguerite.
During an 1862 American tour, she famously sang John Howard Payne’s Home, Sweet Home at the White House for the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and his wife, Mary Lincoln. The Lincolns who were mourning their son Willie, who had died of typhoid, were said to be moved to tears and requested an encore of the song. The song subsequently became associated with Patti, and she performed it many times at the end of recitals and concerts.
Her brother Carlo (1842-1873) was a well-known violin player and was married to the Georgia-born actress Effie Germon (1845-1914).
During her first year in England, Patti sang at Covent Garden under contract for an average fee of £32 10s a performance. After a brief summer holiday, she performed in London 25 times in 6 operas over 11 weeks. Patti then performed that summer at a fee of 500 guineas for just three concerts at the Birmingham Festival. In November, she went to Berlin, opening the first of her European tours. She was often accompanied by her father, brother-in-law, and German governess-chaperone Louise Lauwe, who supervised her academic studies and schedule to ensure her health.
In 1881 Patti returned to the United States for tours, and from then until 1904 would make coast-to-coast tours almost annually. She had by then become one of the most famous women in the world and was one of the highest paid, able to write her own contracts and demand payment in advance. Interestingly, her popularity was immense, and she was beloved worldwide by people of all classes.
Along with her near contemporaries Jenny Lind and Thérèse Tietjens, Patti remains one of the most famous sopranos in history, owing to the purity and beauty of her lyrical voice and the recognized quality of her bel canto technique. In 1877 Giuseppe Verdi described her as being possibly the greatest singer who had ever lived and a “stupendous artist.” Numerous critics and social commentators of the time shared Verdi’s admiration for Patti. Her contemporary admirers deemed her timbre, vocalization, method and flourishes to be perfect. Gioacchino Rossini praised Patti’s trills and remarked that he almost didn’t recognize the music he wrote for Il Barbiere di Siviglia when she sang. Patti is considered one of the greatest coloraturas of the 19th century, and while her voice was not viewed as being of great power, it was said to possess a wide range and evenness.
Patti was prized for the purity and warmth of her voice, as well as her skills as an actress and her natural charm and beauty. Tchaikovsky was also among her fans, as were the President and Mrs. Lincoln, for whom she sang “Home, Sweet Home” originally from Henry Bishop’s opera Clari (or The Maid of Milan) in Washington D.C. in 1862. Throughout her career in the 1870s and 1880s, she performed in what are still popular operas today, such as Il trovatore, La Traviata, Don Giovanni, Rigoletto, Aida.
In the 1890s, she mostly gave solo recitals of popular favorites, and her voice was said to have acquired newfound depth and character. Despite her weakening voice in older age, she was still well regarded as a performer and philanthropist, and appeared in a benefit concert with the Roman baritone Toto Cotogni (1831-1913) singing duets from Don Giovanni. Her 1903 concert at Rome’s Santa Cecilia conservatory was well received, singing composer Luigi Arditi’s Il Bacio. This last rigorous 1903-1904 tour was seen as not very successful as her health deteriorated, and she continued to sing less challenging selections in public occasionally for years afterward. Nonetheless, it was reported that this final tour generated $50,000 for Patti. After many farewell tours, her last public appearance was on 20 October 1914 at a charity benefit for the World War held at Albert Hall for the Red Cross War Fund.
In 1918 Patti donated the Winter Garden building on her estate to the city of Swansea. It was dismantled and re-erected overlooking Swansea Bay, where it remains to this day as the Patti Pavilion Adelina spent the last years of her life enjoying the tranquility at Craig-y-Nos, where she died from heart failure following an extended illness on 27 September 1919.
At the height of her career, she was the most celebrated and highest-paid singer in the world and filled venues in many countries. She traveled in her own private luxury rail carriage in England and kept a permanent suite of rooms at the Northwestern Hotel in London. She was celebrated by royalty before whom she often appeared, and was the first opera singer to be made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1905. The Czar of Russia also decorated her with the Order of Merit and appointed her First Singer of the Court. Other European notables gave her jewels, decorations and honors. Patti’s considerable fortune was inherited by Baron Cederström, who then transferred it, with her collection of stage costumes, operatic scores, and other memorabilia, to be placed in a museum in Stockholm. What became of her jewelry, said to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, was never disclosed.
The great Adelina Patti lives on in opera lore and numerous photographs, paintings, sculptures, cartes de visite, postcards, sheet music and other ephemera, such as cigarette trading cards, her iconic image being amazingly widespread in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There was even a Flora de Adelina Patti cigar and a flower named after her—the Camellia Japonica Adelina Patti; Letters and documents relating to her life and her family can be found around the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France and Austria. She was the pride of Italian diaspora communities and opera audiences spread across thousands of miles. She still garners a cult following in the tech age where her haunting voice lives on in digitally remastered recordings she made in her Welsh home for future generations. Beyond her natural talent and technical abilities, she was remembered for her devotion to her family and friends and her vocation to help the poor. Blessed with incredible wealth for the era, she frequently sang for the less fortunate and spent generous sums of her fortune on feeding and clothing people in need, as well as funding hospitals and schools. She held parties and distributed gifts to as many as 3,000 indigent children at a time. She personally looked after her more than 70 staff members and gave them Christmas presents, and held dances for them in her private theater and ballroom in her castle estate. When she announced her retirement in London, she said she wanted to continue serving the poor and urged others to do the same. When the First World War broke out, she mobilized to help soldiers and their families and continued her generous philanthropy until her death on 27 September 1919 at her Craig-y-nos Castle.[6] She reposes in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris along with her beloved family members who formed a truly unique dynasty who not only participated in but made history in their own right.
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[6] Craig-y-nos Castle in the upper Swansea Valley, Brecon, Powys, South Wales, meaning in English, “Rock of the Night,” is a Victorian-Gothic country house built on parkland beside the river. It is located on the southern edge of Fforest Fawr. The customized and expanded complex constructed and curated by Patti is now used as a boutique hotel, catering, conferencing and entertainment venue. The grounds are surrounded by a country park, which is now part of the Brecon Beacons National Park.
