MADAME PATTI

Southland Times, Issue 18623, 22 August 1919, Page 3

MADAME PATTI

HER HOME LIFE IN WALES. Madame Adelina Patti, the most famous prinia donna the 4 world has ever seen, has just celebrated her 76th birthday. In her castle at Craig-y-Nos (the Rock of Night), buried in the heart of rugged mountains, the event was marked by a festival of song and dance, but the great singer herself passed the day in the utmost quiet of her room in a great south coast hotel, facing a grey sea, and closely guarded from all visitors. Her friends and admirers all over the world will learn with real sorrow that Madame Patti is lying ill, and is not allowed by her doctors to receive visitors.’ Her husband, Baron Cederstrom, is with her, and her room is guarded by an inflexible man servant, who will allow no visitor fb enter. Gladstone, in a vein of pleasantry, once told Madame Patti he would like, to make her Queen of Wales, and certainly throughout the rugged fastnesses of the South Wales mountains she is regarded with that profound reverence and deep affection which a queen might inspire or envy. To the peasants of Swansea Valley she is “Our Madame Patti.” Until quite recent years she preserved to a remarkable degree the wonderful carriage and deportment which always distinguished her appearance on the stage, so that it was difficult to realise that, at that time, her age was approaching 70. The castle stands on a natural platform, with terraces which might have been cut out by some Hercules of the ancient palaeolithic period. I tforms an irregular pile of buildings of Gothic architecture, and has a frontage of 1000 feet. The earliest portion of the castle was erected about 80 years back, of greystone. All Madame Patti’s personal treasures are displayed in the castle drawing-room. They are, in many cases, almost priceless objects of art, which have been presented to her by her admirers in every part of the world.