A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.

Evening Star, Issue 12764, 17 March 1906, Page 5

A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.

Who is La Gavalieri? i 3 the first question v which springs to tho lips after reading all about her iu an American paper. listen.: " She who has reigned the prize professional beauty of Europe is coming to thii country (America) to display in one dhmw figure, face, and voice what princes, paupers, and all other grades of connoisseura in the Old World have agreed is the moat extraordinary aggregation of feminine charms on tho face of the earth. . . / They are. to be displayed to the American public at 1,200d0l a display. If the price seems exorbitant, you must remember thai, as a professional beauty, La Cavalieri is in a class by herself. What other professional beauty has been known to fame who could command the salary of a prima donna st tho Metropolitna Opera-house if—for it is none other than Director Oonried whoso name is at the bottom of La Cavalieri'e contract. ... "She sings Mimi in Puccini's 'La Bobeme,' ' Carmen,' besides other grand opera roles of similar calibre. She dances in appropriate places like a fairy. ... A dozen years ago the new prize beanty was a ragged little girl with a dirty face running about the mean streets of Borne. Before she was fully grown, not more than ten years ago, she had washed her face, scrubbed her hands, and was permitted to sell programmes for soldi to patrons of a Roman theatre. She was a skinny little thing upon whom the unobservant wasted not a second glance. One night a young nobleman saw her, sought out her parents in their gutter home, and sent ner ta school. Her beauty and her various talenta developed simultaneously. By this time she could sing French chansons with all thu chic and vocal sweetness of a Parisienno music-hall favorite, and dance like a prima ballerina, "As a matter of course Paris summoned her, and she went. At the Folies Bergero the Parisians saw and heard and worshipped her. . , . But when tho Russian Prince Bariatinsky saw her he brushed all these aside and laid his heart and his great fortune at her feet. The Prince's relatives were aghast. They buzzed about with, all sorts of obstacles, which the princely lovwr overcame by marrying the beauty out of hand and running away with, his prize." Then, it seems, La Cavalieri retired for & time. She is now, however, bade in Paris, and is to go, a year hence, to the famous New York Opera-house as tho prima dooaa of the lighter operas.