HOLIDAYS OF OPERA SINGERS

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXII, Issue 13573, 20 October 1904, Page 11

HOLIDAYS OF OPERA SINGERS

Tbe closing of the Covent Garden season of opera sends the greatest opera singers of-the world-into vacation for a few weeics, and very varied are the ways in which they elect to spend their holidays. Madame Caive set out immediately for Paris on her way to her chateau in .-kveyron, a medieval structure which she as a peasant girl had admired, but never thought of possessing till her genius brought her much wealth. The prima donna now travels as much as possible by automobile, which must be about as bad for her voice as anything one can imagine. But Madame Calve has never been known to think much of' her voice when her whims were at stake. Madame Sembrich has gone to her house in Dresden, where she usually spends no Store than two weeks in the year. After the preliminary arrangements of _ her outing in the mountains are completed, she will p go away again, devoting most of the summer to climbing. She has been to Switzerland and in the Dolomites. She usually geeks out tbe less known resorts, and lives for two months in a short walking skirt and shirt blouses. She has her own dining room and attendants in the hotels, and guests who have heard rumours that she is there cannot be persuaded to believe it. Last summer one American guest acted as if she had been lured to the hotel under false pretences when she could find no traces of the prima donna in the hotel. She was told that Madame Sembrich was in the habit of starting on her climbing trip early in the morning. “ Oh.” answered the guest, somewhat mollified, “then that is the little woman I see every morning walking over the hill as I get out of bed-” _ t . The return to Dresden is made only m time to prepare for the work of the winder Madame Sembrich never sings during these weeks of vacation. , Madame Nordica is resting this summer in the United States, although she intends to go abroad later for a short stay in Paris. _ . Madame Emma Eames is with Julian Story, her husband, at their beautiful home in Vallombrosa, on which they have been working for the last sis years. Mr Storv has just had the last of the roads on the place completed, and there are now more than twenty miles of drives within fhs grounds. The house is built in the form of a medtse-,' val castle. Here Madame Eames lives for four months in the year, enjoying a simple cut of-door life, and spending as much of her time as possible among her dogs. Madame Lili Lehmann, who is to take part this summer in the Mozart festival at Salzburg, lives in the Grunewald, although she has recently declared with much warmth that this retreat near Berlin is not nearly so pleasant as it used to be. She wrote an indignant letter to a Berlin newspaper saying that the Grunewald is now overrun bv cheap bands and beer gardens, although ‘she bought her property there •with the express condition that no such nuisances were to be allowed. In August. Madame Lehmann will go to the Salzkammergut. and, dressing herself as a shepherdess, will climb the hills until her engagements call her back to Berlin. Edyth Walker has been spending the summer near Munich, and will remain there until it is time for her to begin her season at the Metropolitan. Ernesto Caruso went from London to Monte Cat ini, the favourite resort of Verdi and the shrine of memories of him to which all Italian mnscians resort. He_ is there with his wife, but will return earlier to this countrv than,his artistic duties require, because he expects an important happening in the family which will add another singer to it. Antonio Scotti, who has been in .Naples, will also be at Monte watini, and is to take the cure at Salsomaggiore. Both Jean and Edouard de Reszke, who have been in London, were to go to their homos in Poland at tbe end of the month of July. Andreas Dippel, of all the men singers, has the oddest home this summer. He has built for himself at Kaltsnlauetgeben, near Vienna, an American house designed by a noted American architect, and embodying the most comfortable ideas in American ho~es. Porcelain bathtubs, hot water in abundance and electric lights all are in the tenor's new house. Albert Saleza is at his home in Bruges, where he devotes his leisure to his farm.