xPatti, Adelina1843╨1919opera singerBorn on February 10, 1843, in Madrid, Spain, Adela Juana Maria Patti was the daughter of Italian opera performers. When she was quite young, her parents emigrated to the United States, and she grew up in New York City. She sang from an early age and made her debut at eight, in November 1851, in concert at Tripler Hall. For three years thereafter she toured successfully in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Cuba with Norwegian violinist Ole Bull under the management of impresario Maurice Strakosch, who had married her older sister Amalia. A period of study under her half-brother, Ettore Barili, and a brief West Indian tour with pianist Louis N4. M. Gottschalk followed, and in November 1859 she made her operatic debut in Lucia di Lammermoor at the New York Academy of Music. She subsequently sang La Sonnambula, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Martha, and I Puritani in New York and on tour before traveling to London, where her debut in La Sonnambula at Covent Garden in May 1861 was a sensation. For the next 23 years she was a Covent Garden regular. Her Paris debut, again in La Sonnambula, in November 1862 was another great success, and in Vienna, St. Petersburg, Monte Carlo, Madrid, Moscow, Brussels, and elsewhere her pure, sweet soprano and dazzling technique conquered all. She made her La Scala debut in La Traviata in November 1877.Patti Verdi declared her the greatest singer he had ever heard, and others, from musicians to royalty to a unanimously adulatory opera public, eagerly concurred. She was without doubt the supreme exponent of bel canto and coloratura in her day╤a day that lasted well over half a century. Other works in her repertoire of 42 operas included Linda di Chaumounix, Don Pasquale, L╒Elisir d╒Amore, Faust, RomÄo et Juliette, LakmÄ and Don Giovanni. From 1881 she made a series of annual tours of the United States, in the course of which she received a record $5000 per concert (she occasionally got $6000). Her concert performances combined arias and ballads and usually ended with ╥Home, Sweet Home,╙ a song closely identified with her and one with which she moved Queen Victoria to tears. Her final U.S. tour was in 1903╨1904. Her official farewell appearance occurred at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in December 1906, but she continued to sing in concert from time to time until a last appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in October 1914 in a benefit for the Red Cross War Fund; George V and Queen Mary were among those present on the latter date. Adelina Patti lived in retirement at Craig-y-Nos, her estate in Brecknock, Wales, until her death there on September 27, 1919. ▐styl ` $ ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ ' !I !I !I U !I b !I d !I { !I | !I â !I ë !I ô !I █ !I Φ !I j !I w !I W !I b !I u 5¬ v !I ╠ !I ▀ !I ß !I φ !I ∩ !I !I !I !I !I !I !I !I % !I 1 !I link `
