DEATH OF ADELINA PATTI.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12757, 29 September 1919, Page 8

DEATH OF ADELINA PATTI.

A FAMOUS SOPRANO. A cable message from London announces tho death of Adelina Patti. Adelina Juana Maria Patti (Baroness Cederstrom), the daughter of an Italian singer, Salvator Patti, was bom at Madrid on February 19, 1843. Her mother/who was also a singer, was Spanish, being known before her marriage . as Signora Bavili. Both the parents of Adelina went to America, where their daughter was taught singing by Maurice Strakosch, who married Amelia Patti, an ' elder sister. Sifted with a brilliant soprano voice, Adelina Patti began her public career it, the age of seven in the concert halls of Now York, where in 1859 she also made her first appearance as Lucia in Donizetti’s opera, “ Lucia di Lammermoor.” On May 14, 1861, she sang as Amina in Bellini’s opera, “ La Sonnambula,” at Convent Garden, and from this time she became the leading operatic pfrfma donna, her appearances in, London, Paris and the other music centres being a long succession of triumphs, and her roles covering’ all the great parts in Italian opera. In 1868 she married Henri, Marquis de Caux, .a member of Napoleon Hi’s, household, from, whom she was divorced in 1885. She then married Nicolini, the tenor, who died in 1898, and in 1899 she became the wife of Baron Cederstrom, a Swede; -who was naturalised as an Englishman. Madam Patti ceased to appear on the operatic stage in public after tho eighties, but at Cragg-y-Nos, her castle in Wales, she built a private theatre, and her occasional appearance at the Albert Hall continued to attract enthusiastic audiences, her singing of “Homo. Sweet Home” becoming particularly associated with those events. Partly owing to her fine original training, partly to her splendid method, and partly to her avoidance of Wagnerian roles, Madame Patti wonderfully preserved the freshness ..of her voice, and she will be remembered as, after Jenny Lind v the greatest soprano of the nineteenth century,