Madame Patey's Death.

Evening Post, Volume XLVII, Issue 93, 20 April 1894, Page 4

Madame Patey's Death.

Tho sudden death of Madame Patey has deprived us (says the London correspondent of tho Sydney Morning Horald) of onr leading contralto and made a void in the musical life of the country whioh will not be easily filled up. It Beems going a long way back to talk of tho beginning of her career. Men in middle lifo can easily remember her as a " star" in their boyhood— perhaps to some of us it was a " rovelation " to hoar her sing for tbo first timo. Yet she was really by no means old — only 52, and well preserved at that. Bat the fact is that Madame Patey began her artistic work very early. There is is an old stor^ of her making such a Buocess in the Midtandß while in her toons that tho applause of the audience sot her crying, and sent her off tho platform so frightened thatahe did not recover her nerves for a long time. I have heard it said by some who knew her in earlier days that she used to confess that she had no natural eat for music, and that she had to have her execution drilled into har by hard practice and careful tnition. Probably no one who has heard her in oratorio would bavo suspected thiff. At all events she was famous in the highest' branch of her profession by the time she was" five or six and twenty, and when Madam* SaintonDolby retired in 1870, she steppod.essily into her place as the leading contralto. She was in excellent spirits, and apparently in oound health, even up to a few days ago ; but in spite of all her long practice she nover lost a tendency to nervous excitement — a common weakness with all people of really artistio temporamont - in face of tho strain of public effort. This undoubtedly killed her. She died suddenly |of apoplexy after singing in .publio in Sheffield, and gaining a reception which moved her io an oxcoptional degree, and whioh was not meroly a tribute to the immediate display of hor gifts, but a recognition of old services. She was, in fact, on a farowoll tour boforo rotjring into private lifo- a circumstance whioh adds anothor touch of pathos to her budden death. It is onrious that she should have fallen into the swoon which preceded hor death immediately after singing " Tho Hanks of Allan Water" as an encore, in obedience to a call which she could not refuse but which it cost her agony to comply with- so that the last words she sans were "Thero a corpse lay she." I'nlike too many of our publio favourites, Madamo Patoy had no privato " history " to sot against her public success. A goodheartod and worthy woman, she was greatly esteemed in her private life, and has died doeply regretted by her family and friends.