"In Many Ways A Curious Woman"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 192, 26 February 1943, Page 2

''In Many Ways A Curious Woman"

whose birth was the subject of a tribute from 2YA the ather day, sang for 64 years, and earned three million pounds with her voice. Men who had listened to her entranced as mere youths in the ’60’s found themselves as grandfathers still under the spell of her miraculous voice years after Queen Victoria had died. The singer who sang in London as a girl (because the American Civil War had upet her contracts in the States), lived to sing in the Albert Hall, London, while the Great War was raging on the Continent. The story that Adelina Patti was actually born during an interval between the acts was always widely believed, but it was only a pleasant legend. Patti once smilingly declared that she hated to contradict the tale, for she would have liked it if it had been true! In many ways she was a _ curious woman. As a girl she would not sing unless she was given a new doll beforehand, and as a prima donna, she would never go on a stage or a concert platform unless her stipulated fee was handed to her in notes or gold prior to the performance. Madame Patti had three husbands-a French Marquis, the Marquis de Caux, whom she divorced in 1885 after a 17 years’ unhappy union; Signor Nicolini, DELINA PATTI, the centenary of

an Italian singer, whom she married in 1886 and who died in 1898; and a Swedish nobleman, Baron Rolf As seh aaa who survived her. Retiring officially in 1906, she made one or two public appearances for charity after that, and the last time her London admirers heard her was on October 20, 1914, when at the Albert Hall she sang at the age of 72 on behalf of the Red Cross, The strength and clarity of her voice astonished everyone present, and she received a tremendous ovation,