Lina Cavalieri.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 13, 28 September 1910, Page 2

Lina Cavalieri.

THE FAMOUS BEAUTY OF THE OPERATIC STAGE,

NOTE.— A remarkable pre-nuptial agreement, made on May 3], betweeni Robert B z . Chanter and Lina CaraLieri, the Italian prima donna, has been filed in Rew York. Chanter assigns all his real estate and an annual payment of 20,000 dollars (£4000) to his tcife absolutely, for the consideration of one dollar, and a promise of marriage. Chanler teas previously married and divorced.

6 / J 1 A’ERY beautiful woman is called f I upon only to know her profile, J er full face, and her figure; as long as these last she has small reason to study anything else. T’o be a very 'beautiful woman, and yet to have the ambition, talent, and determination to be somethir»g more in the world, is to create an unusual situation —a situation such as Natalina Cavalieri presents to From the beginning. Mme. Cavalieri’s purpose Las been as firmly mapped out as a- great general, or a plain woman, would plan a campaign to conquer dis-

“Thais.” Engaged for three trial performances, her success caused her retention there for nine. She is a native of Rome, and t'avalieri is the family name. Her first summer days were spent in playing in the shadow of a massive doorway, under which soldier ancestors of hers—cavalieri —may have ridden into the stone-paved . court beyond in the times of the Caesars. Her delicate, aristocratic type of beauty, her instinctive and graceful doing of the right thing at the right moment, are birthrights of the girls of the old Roman families. One sees in her -the late-bloom-

tinction. At live, she had decided to be either a great dancer or a prima donna. Early opportunities were not given her; all that she had wore of her own making. For years she sang in cafes chantants, where her beauty, and, incidentally, her gay little Neapolitan melodies, conquered every audience that heard her. This was a situation with which most cafe chantant performers would have been idly content; Mme. Cavalieri was not. When she was able to afford it. she began serious musical study. For throe years she toiled at it, meanwhile doing her cafe singing in the evenings; then sin- made her debut in grand opera at the San Carlo in Naples, as Mimi in “La Boheinp/* with Bonci in the east. Since that she has sung in opera in many countries, but in no case wi'th sinh unique entrust as last spring in Paris, where, once a singer at the FoliesBergero music hall, she returned as prima donna at the Opera in Massenet's-

ing Hower of a long line of cavaliers, whose fortunes, like their hearts, have long ago crumbled; but they left to her the one unfailing quality of i-oar..ge, ami on it she has built up her life. Her early public career in Rome was a. pleasing success of the usual kind. It was not until later, after singing in various other cities, that she first went to Paris. There the adorable charm of her youth, the insinuating swing of her Italian melodies, the naive simplicity of her songs, ami the classic beauty of the singer, swept the town. From then on, Mme. Cavalieri knew what such a triumph could bring. Its material meaning, to her. was that now at last she could leave behind her the career in which she had won success, and e tudy to reach a higher level of art.

It takes much strength of character and. no small amount of self-reliance to give up a successful career to embark on an untried one. In those days of study, and since, Mme. Cavalieri has learned the prima donna parts in “Traviata,” •‘Faust,” “Romeo et Juliette,” “Carmen,” “Mefistofele,” “Pagliacci,” “Cavalleria Rusticana,” “La Boheme,” “losca,” the ‘‘Manon Leseaut” of Puccini, and the “Manon” of Massenet; “Thais,” “Fedora,” and “Les Contes d’Hoffman,” in which last she has sung both Olympia and Antonia. She made her New York debut in the title-role of Giordano's “Fedora” on December 5, 1900. The dramatie side of her art Mme. Cavalieri has never studied, in the traditional sense of the word. Her somewhat daring theory is that one should act paturally, and that study of the accepted sort only Jesuits in acting unnaturally. Her plan is to read the 'books of the opera, and whatever literature may exist on the subject; after that she thinks over what she has read, and goes on for rehearsal. She forms her conceptions not So much by reason as by instinct—the instinct of a woman’s sympathy and psychological power. (She finds in her own nature the best key to the problems of an operatic heroine’s personality; and when a sensitive woman can discover hvithin herself an element that yields re(Spouse to the nature she is portraying, who may say that her way of portraying it is not the right one?

Such a method might well be disastrous to one not naturally endowed with Mms. iCavalieri's remarkable gift as a temperamental actress. The extent of that gift Was most strikingly shown, perhaps, when she appeared as Tosea at the Metropolitan, a little more than a year ago. It was said that she had never sung the Tole before, but the revelation she gave of its dramatic possibilities was positively thrilling, to those who witnessed her performance. Mme. Cavalieri has lived, she has (Struggled, she has suffered; and these, jafter all, make up the basic fund to draw Upon in comprehending any character. (Situations may change, but the human heart is unalterable. As any musician iknows, some keys are for tenderness, some for strength, and others for passionate emotion. In its expression, one character differs from another in the degree of its intensity, like so many different keys in music, varying in strength, ibut each with the same number of tones to play upon. The charm of Mme. Cavalieri’s manner is as difficult to define as is feminine wisdom to analyse. Some phases of it recall Mme. Patti —for instance, the gwift little movement that brings her to an attitude of smiling attention, so complete that for an instant you feel that you are the only thing she is interested in—a fact for which you return

thanks. Again, she has a way of letting you read her thoughts in her eyes, just so far and no farther, for the next moment the pupil has darkened, shutting

you out from your answer inscrutably, disconifitingly. There is about her, too, an unconventional, untrammeled alertness that recalls the quick and graceful motion of a bird on a bough. She has the pose and air of a woman who, mentally and bodily, for all her slight, aristocratic physique, knows the practical side of things, and realises the meaning •of personal independence. Italy, France, Russia, and the United (States are the countries in which Mine. Cavalieri has appeared in opera. She lias refused offers from South America in order to return, after the close of the New York series, to St. Petersburg, where tfdie has sung for five seasons. Later she 5s to add two other European capitals Ito her list, making her entree in London at Covent Garden, and in \ ienna at the Imperial Opera. Perhaps because of the aspect of contrast, which Heine symbolised in the longing of the Southern palm for the Northern pine, Mme. Cavalivri loves Riisisia ardently; the. cold, the glitter of snow-covered earth, the rush behind swift horses through biting frost, respond to her spirit of restless energy. But there is nothing lieroic about her; fihe is genuinely u woman, genuinely womanly in her appeal. She loves pretty frocks, she likes riding, and she is passionately fond of dancing, that other profession which once divided her choice.