Welsh Journals

ADELINA PATTI, QUEEN OF HEARTS. By John Frederick Cone. Scolar Press, 1994 Pp. 400. £ 25.00. The huge popularity of the 'three tenors', with all the attendant 'hype' of World Cup fever, videos, cassettes and compact discs, may seem a world away from the career of a largely forgotten nineteenth-century soprano, yet, as John Frederick Cone reveals in his biography of Adelina Patti, their collective fame and fortune rather pales into insignificance alongside that of the great diva. The daughter of a Sicilian tenor and a Roman soprano, Patti showed considerable vocal skill from an early age. At four she was singing ballads and operatic arias and when still a small child she could repeatedly sing F above high C-the highest notes written by Mozart for the 'Queen of the Night'. (In later life she was to claim that scales, trills, ornaments and fioriture came naturally to her.) At eight she was singing operatic arias by Verdi and Bellini and was widely hailed as La Petite Jenny Lind. So prodigious was her talent that she undertook her first American tour which lasted from September 1852 to the spring of 1854 and made a considerable amount of money for her family. She was still only nine years of age when the tour began. Such touring for one so young had its dark side. Adelina was often miserable, experiencing periods of intense dreariness and loneliness; longing for home and the companionship of other children. Even so, this tradition of annual touring, established before she was even in her teens, was to continue until she was in her sixties. There was a danger that over-exploitation would ruin so young and tender a voice. Remarkably, this did not occur. Careful training prepared her musically and psychologically for her operatic debut as the eponymous heroine in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in New York on 24 November 1859. She was just sixteen. Despite her youth and lack of experience, she sang no fewer than twelve roles in her first year as an opera singer, including such demanding parts as Amina in La Sonnambula, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, and Violetta in La Traviata. Such a schedule would normally be regarded as a recipe for disaster; however, skilled teaching and care of the voice, allied to Patti's innate musicianship, ensured for her a long and illustrious career. Her motto: Chi va piano va sano e va lontano, 'who goes slowly goes safely; who goes safely goes far', is said by Cone to characterize her career. Certainly, as the author shows, Patti went very far, geographically, socially and in terms of her prodigious earning power. That she travelled safely is clear from the universal praise she earned from the critics. Whether or not she travelled slowly is, however, a matter of debate. How many other sopranos have embarked on a career by singing Lucia, or performed twelve different roles within a single season, let alone the first? Cone has researched Patti's life and career with enormous care, thoroughness and affection. Yet despite his. obvious high regard for her, he does not shrink from revealing some of the diva's less endearing characteristics. She could be devious, jealous, temperamental and occasionally highly unprofessional. A clause in her contract with Covent Garden in 1885 stipulated that she should be 'free [sic] to attend rehearsals' but would 'not be required or bound to attend any'. Such an agreement must have exasperated her fellow performers-something which Cone fails to consider