Adela Juana Maria Patti was born to a Sicilian father and Italian mother on February 19th 1843 in the Spanish city of Madrid. She was the fourth of six children and the family was relatively poor. Her parents were both involved in opera and they moved to New York in 1847, where there were better employment opportunities for a show business family.

In 1861, at the age of eighteen, Adelina was invited to Covent Garden in London to take the soprano role of Amina in Bellini's La Sonnambula. She bought a house in Clapham, South of London and went on to perform the same part in Paris and Vienna in subsequent years.

In 1862 she sang Home Sweet Home at the White House for Abraham and Mary Lincoln who were in mourning for their son Willie, who had died of Typhoid. The Lincolns were moved to tears and requested an encore. The song had been written for the opera "Clari-The Maid of Milan" by American John Howard Payne and put to music by British composer Henry Rowley Bishop . It became associated with Adelina Patti and she performed it many times by popular request.

She toured as far as Leningrad and Buenos Aires but continued to make Europe her base, marrying the Marquis de Caux, Equerry to Napoleon the third of France in 1868. In the same year she sang at Rossini's funeral in Paris. The song was from his Stabat Mater and she sang it as a duet with Marietta Alboni. 

Ten years later she bought Craig-y-Nos, a large early Victorian house and surrounding park beside the river Tawe near Abercrave ( Abercraf ) in South Wales, UK. She paid £ 3,500 ($5,250), which in 1878, was a princely sum for a house, and took up residence, not with her husband, but with the tenor  Ernesto Nicolini with whom she had been touring. The £64,000 ($96,000), which she settled on her husband "The Marquis de Caux", was an indication of the wealth and fame she had acquired.

In 1886 she obtained her divorce and married Ernesto with whom she had now been living "in sin" for eight years. They set about extending Craig-y-Nos, spending over £100,000 ($150,000) on a new north and south wing, a winter garden, conservatory and clock tower. This major project was partly paid for by a tour of the USA, on which she commanded over £1,000 ($1,500) for each performance.

By the 1890's Adelina Patti was one of the most famous women in the world and certainly one of the highest paid. She was comfortable with people of all classes, from monarchs to kitchen maids and was universally liked. She exuded presence, style and good taste and her company was always in demand. The Emperor and Empress of France always insisted that she stayed with them when she visited Paris and other Heads of State sought her company wherever she travelled. She was one of the first "international superstars".