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| Adelina Patti sang for Queen Victoria for over 25 years. She also sang for most other heads of state and world leaders. Tsar Alexander the second of Russia had awarded her the Russian Order of Merit in 1870. Franz Joseph (Emperor of Austria) and Maximillian (Emperor of Mexico) had all bestowed honours on her. The French named a rose coloured flower after her, calling the Mediterranean plant "Camellia Japonica Adelina Patti". This variety is still grown widely in Southern France. In 1897 she was invited to open the Grand Theatre in Swansea, close to her home in South Wales. This was a venue at which she subsequently performed many times. Over the years there have been reported sightings in the theatre of a small lady dressed all in white, accompanied by a smell of violets. These have been attributed to the strong association with Adelina Patti. When her second husband Ernesto Nicolini died in January 1898 Adelina was 56 years old, and the couple had spent 12 happy years together. On January 25th 1899 she married for the third time. Her new husband was Baron Rolf Cederstrom of Sweden who was twenty six years her junior. He did not approve of her circle of friends and after the marriage her social life was greatly curtailed. In 1901 Adelina wrote the following poem about her home at Craig-y-Nos Castle in which she acknowledges that the wealth, which enabled her to develop the Craig-y-Nos Estate, resulted from her musical talents.
Adelina was still active in both professional and charity work however and found time to write from the Hotel du Quirinal in Rome to the Poor Little Orphans Hospital on the 27th of March 1903 arranging a charity concert. She made her final tour of America that same year, using a seventy two foot long Pullman Railcar, formerly used by Roosevelt and Prince Henry of Prussia. This was luxuriously equipped with two bedrooms and a drawing/dining room containing a specially adapted Steinway piano. The Pullman Company provided her with a steward, chef and waiter. A Mr Lucius Perry Hills was so moved by her performance at the De Gives Grand Opera House in Atlanta, Georgia (December 1903) that he wrote a six verse poem entitled "When Patti Sang". This was published and appeared in the Swansea Journal. |
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Throughout her long career her fame was spread by such live performances, all accomplished without the aid of microphones or amplifiers. No recordings of her voice had ever been made, and it was 1906, when she was 63 years old, before she could be persuaded to have her voice "captured" by the new Phonograph. She was paid £1000 for the recording session by the Gramophone and Typewriter Company of City Rd, London. The record cylinders were sold for the significant price of £1.00 each, which approximated to the average weekly wage of the time. |
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An early recording session |
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The recording took place over four days at Craig-y-Nos Castle and Adelina was uneasy at having to sing into a metal funnel. She was also very apprehensive of how she would sound on record and so she prayed before every song. The recordings were made onto delicate waxed master cylinders from which more durable copies would later be made. To encourage her, the engineers sacrificed one recorded master cylinder by playing it as she descended the stairs for dinner. Adelina froze and gripped the stair rail, not moving again until her voice had subsided. |
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She then burst out excitedly into French saying "Ah, c'est moi, Patti", announcing that she now understood why people found her voice to be special. This was not taken as boastful, but rather as a genuine and spontaneous reaction to the voice she had just heard. She finished the recording session and left the World with a belated snippet of one of the greatest female voices of all time. A German music professor visiting Abercrave ( Abercraf ) and Craig-y-Nos Castle in 1999 explained her unique place in the world of opera as follows... "The greatest gifts an opera singer can possess are clarity, quality of tone, range and expression. Adelina Patti is the only person known to me who had them all, and under such exquisite control". |
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By 1909, she had settled into semi-retirement and the number of staff at Craig-y-Nos had fallen to eighteen, including her French chef and four gardeners. Her last public appearance was in October 1914 when she sang at the Albert Hall in London for the Red Cross war effort. On her death on September 27th 1919 she was embalmed in the cellars of Craig-y-Nos Castle and lay in her private chapel until October 24th of that year. She was then taken to lie in St Cynogs Church in Ystradgynlais, and from there to the Roman Catholic Church in Kensal Green in London for the World to pay its respects. In line with her instructions, her body was finally transported to France and buried near Rossini, in the cemetery at Père Lachaise, now a suburb of Paris. Her grave is marked by an unassuming plain black stone. |
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