Word: adelina
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...tradition goes back to Chester A. Arthur, who called on Operatic Soprano Adelina Patti. Teddy Roosevelt gave weekly musicales for as many as 500 guests, invited such performers as Paderewski and Actress Ethel Barrymore. Neither Herbert Hoover nor Calvin Coolidge went in for such lighthearted entertainment, although Coolidge once had John Barrymore to dinner before going to the National to see the Great Profile play Hamlet. Both F.D.R. (he liked Lawrence Tibbett, Marian Anderson, Kate Smith and Mickey Mouse, among others) and Truman were major White House impresarios...
...during the Met's "Golden Age of Song," at the turn of the century, Jean and Edouard de Reszke, Emma Eames, Lillian Nordica, Nellie Melba, et al. educated their audiences to hear Italian and French operas sung in their original languages. Still, educated or not, Guest Star Adelina Patti could stop the opera by singing Home, Sweet Home or The Last Rose of Summer in The Barber of Seville's lesson scene...
Battle of Monocles. In the third Covent Garden, designed 100 years ago by Architect Edward Barry, the fires have been artistic or temperamental, set by such prima donnas as Giulia Grisi, Nellie Melba, Emma Albani. In the '90s, Adelina Patti, who imperiously ignored rehearsals, once filled the stage with detectives disguised as supers to guard her diamonds. Famed Manager Augustus Harris made Covent Garden London's choicest nightspot for rich and royal patrons who came to monocle each other-and protested violently when he doused the house lights during performances...
...passionate hate, tempestuous love and outrageous gesture. The prima donna was larger than life, and a law only to her own towering talent. One composer did not dream of objecting when Maria Malibran (1808-36) regally replaced one whole act he had written with music by another composer. Adelina Patti (1843-1919) traveled in a deluxe private railway car of her own, flanked by husband, dogs, birds and servants. Her fees were stupendous, and one agent protested that she was asking more per month than the President of the U.S. got per year. "Well, then," said Patti stonily...
...dodging Dr. Hubert Parry's Job"; the closing lines are marked by a note of extreme sorrow: " He might have let Job alone . . . for, patient as we both are, there are limits to human endurance." Deadly insults march in disguise as compliments, as when Shaw wrote of Soprano Adelina Patti, after she had enjoyed 35 years of enormous popularity: "It is my firm belief that Patti is capable of becoming a great singer." Battle Lines. Shaw's criticisms are, almost to a word, a joy to read, even when the personalities are beyond memory. One reason: musical battle...