Frances Alda

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 120, 11 August 1927, Page 16

Frances Alda

' NEW ZEALAND SOPRANO i TO VISIT HER HOMELAND A FAMOUS PRIMA DONNA Opening her tour of the Southern Hemisphere in Australia to-day, Madame Frances Alda, the Christchurchborn prima donna, will shortly arrive in New Zealand on her world tour. Madame Alda was born in Christchurch, but at a very early age went to Australia, and thence to Europe, receiving her training in Paris. The New Zealand soprano has distinguished herself in “Tosca,” “La Boheme,” “Butterfly,” “Cleopatra” and other operas—in fact, so high is her repute that more than one great tenor has stipulated that she must be the associate artist.

Frances Alda has reigned Queen of Song at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, for a length of time only granted by the capricious public to a prima donna, who has charm as well as voice and method. Ambition took her to New York, and by pluck and divine singing she reached the head line at the Metropolitan. Romance, too, found her there, for Gatti-Cazazza, the director, persuaded her that she could be as much a prima donna married as single. Gatti, a man of imagination, at the wedding feast, gave his New Zealand bride a pretty surprise, and incidentally started a fashion that prevailed in New York for quite a while. When Alda pressed the knife into the summit of the sparkling bridal cake, behold it swung apart, and out fluttered two speckless doves. Although Madame Alda’s home is now in New York she spends most of her time between there and the Continent.