Adelina Patti. The first superstar in Lisbon
Between October 1885 and March 1886, Lisbon music lovers lived in anxiety.
The superstar of her time, Adelina Patti, was about to arrive to the Royal Theatre of São Carlos.
As Théodore de Grave said in 1865, at the age of 22 she had already sung in front of all the sovereigns, had already known all the hits, had already become an idol of the “smartest public on the planet”.
Among her friends she counted “princes and great lords; at her feet crowns fell”, “made many hearts beat in secret” and was loved by all who came to her (de Grave, 1865, 35–36).
“Insanity”, “delirium” and “nervous”. That was how Casimiro Dantas, a chronicler of the Portuguese illustrated press, described the reaction of Lisbon’s “high life” to the soprano performance Adelina Patti at the Royal Theatre of São Carlos (Dantas, 1886a).
Patti was one of the most renowned opera singers of her time.
Born in Spain to Italian parents who emigrated to the United States of America, she made her debut at the age of sixteen at the New York Academy of Music.
In Europe, premiered on May 14, 1861, at the Royal Italian Opera in Covent Garden.
She was admired by Giuseppe Verdi, and her career as a “coloratura soprano” spanned nearly sixty years.
© NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON
In October 1885, five performances of Adelina Patti were announced and which would take place the following month.
The announcement was so thunderous that the São Carlos box office sold out in 48 hours. The demand for tickets was such that a parallel sales market developed and gave rise to all sorts of frauds.
In the theatre, each ticket was sold for an exorbitant price (Lobato, 1886b, p. 74).
For Lisbon music lovers, Adelina’s performance was an opportunity that they could not miss because, rightly or wrongly, there were rumours about the artistic decline of Patti, who was then 43 years old.
Another chronicler, Gervásio Lobato, referring to the artist’s performances in Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid, echoed these reservations in the chronicle of the illustrated magazine “O Occidente”(Lobato, 1886a).
In fact, in 1884, amidst the cheers from the audience in Barcelona and Valencia, the diva was booed, freezing the expectations of those in Madrid who disbursed considerable sums to obtain the ticket.
According to Gervásio Lobato, the problem would not be the singer’s performance, but rather the hefty ticket price.
“The gentlemen, who whistled Patti in Valencia and Barcelona, did not whistle the diva, they whistled the businessman. They did not complain because Patti gave them less marks, they complained because the businessman took too many marks”. (Lobato, 1886a)
However, according to the account of Claude Augé in the magazine “Larousse Mensuel Illustré”, in Valencia, when she refused to sing the waltz “Il Bacio”, Adelina Patti received the first boo of her career (Augé, 1919, p. 944).
It would be in Madrid that doubts would be dispelled. At the very first recital, Patti triumphed, raising any hostility and being “noisy and unanimously” acclaimed.
Those were great news for São Carlos’ entrepreneur, António de Campos Valdez, who could rest assured in what could be the highlight of an excellent season in Lisbon’s theatre.
However, the month of November arrived and Patti was not seen in Lisbon …
A cholera outbreak had spread across Europe, especially Spain, and as today, there were quarantines everywhere.
For this reason, Adelina Patti made to know that, as long as the quarantines were not lifted, she would not act in Portugal.
In Parliament, panic is felt, and concerns stand out (session of July 8–1885) for the “tent” located on Avenida da Liberdade, where the “individuals who managed to cross the sanitary cord established on the border” (with Spain) were collected: the deputies expressed their apprehension for the damage they might have caused on their trip to Lisbon, but they barely concealed their fear for their own lives. (Abreu, 2018)
Concurring to the delay was, of course, the question of her marriage to the Marquis de Caux, Henri Roger de Cahusac.
Their marriage collapsed and Caux granted her separation in 1877 and divorce in 1885, at which point Patti lost half her fortune.
Therefore, cholera, scandal, and frustration will have been sufficient reasons for the delay.
Finally, the singer’s arrival at the Santa Apolónia train station was announced at 6 am on March 25, 1886.
However, the anxiety was such that “Patti was already having lunch at the Grande Hotel in Lisbon, and on the streets, people still say, insistently, that Patti did not arrive.” (Lobato, 1886b, p. 74).
The fears only have dissipated, when the artist was seen promenading along the Tagus River in an uncovered carriage, in the company of the French tenor Ernesto Nicolini, whom she would marry months later.
It was a relief! After all, she had arrived!
The details of her staying in Lisbon were meticulously reported in the social magazines of the time.
From the glass of warm water, she asked for, as soon as she arrived at the Hotel, to the detailed description of her menus and to her exclusive preference for Château Margaux wine.
João da Mata, the owner of the Grande Hotel de Lisboa, located on Avenida da Liberdade, endeavoured to satisfy all the desires of the celebrity who, with her presence, attracted attention to his hotel establishment.
During her stay in Lisbon, Patti’s lunch menu included rice broth, Chateaubriand sirloin steak, spinach, asparagus, boiled fish, roast chicken and apple sauce.
Dinners, served around 7:00 pm, included pasta soup, boiled fish, English steak with potatoes, English peas, roast chicken, spinach, asparagus («Adelina Patti», 1886b, p. 2).
The detail goes so far as to describe the state of the artist’s throat and stomach, emphasizing the discomfort that a rheumatic pain in the knee had caused her («Adelina Patti», 1886b, p. 2).
The prediction of Patti’s artistic decadence haunted Lisbon’s dilettantes. The city was divided between those who believed in its virtues and those who favoured its misfortune.
On the other hand, the São Carlos audience already had its diva — Fidès Devriés.
That is why Adelina Patti had to make use of her artistic qualities.
The audience at first was in a cold, almost hostile, expectation. The public loves Devriés, and we find him full of reason and that is why we do the same (…) and he understood that his cult for the beautiful Fidès forbade him to make another idol more expensive.
(Lobato, 1886b)
On the night of March 27, 1886, a crowd invaded São Carlos. They were preparing to confirm the fame of the one who started her career in the United States of America and now made a splash on the stages of Europe.
The tension was high and although Patti sang and performed hauntingly well, she failed to charm the audience with Gioachino Rossini’s “Il barbiere di Siviglia”.
Finally, she got the first applause in the 3rd act singing the waltz of the opera “Dinorah” by Giacomo Meyerbeer. She ended the performance in apotheosis with “Il Bacio” by Luigi Arditi.
It was a giant success! The acclaim was almost unanimous.
The fame and power of Adelina Patti aroused contradictory feelings among the Lisbon crowd, which was so divided by the artist’s condemnation of her supposed eagerness for money as for the admiration of its elegance and beauty.
About the tone of a chronicle about Adelina Patti, Casimiro Dantas wrote:
Admiration for the singer Adelina makes her smother some tiny hatreds for the woman Adelina, and propels her, as the most enthusiastic of the “reporters”, to the “madonna” rooms, where there is a dizzying scent of violets and expensive essences, an atmosphere saturated with fine and intoxicating aromas
(Dantas, 1886a, p. 2)
The ostentation was evident and examples were not lacking.
For example, she impressed viewers when she performed Verdi’s “La Traviata” in Covent Garden (1861) with diamonds set into the bodice of her dress, creating a dazzling effect.
Valued at around £200.000, two Bow Street police officers were hired to join the opera choir and oversee the dress (Opera Divas, undated).
Peter Clark, director of the Boston Metropolitan Opera Archive, quoting Robert Tuggle, implies that Adelina Patti would be the highest paid singer of her time.
Longtime MET archivist Robert Tuggle noted in his book “The Golden Age of Opera” that she was probably the highest-paid singer in art history, earning $5.000 a night, which she insisted on receive in gold in her dressing room before singing (approximately $143.000 in 2020 dollars).
(Clark, undated)
During the visit to Lisbon, there were many comments and considerations regarding the price of tickets and subscriptions, given the poor financial capacity of even the wealthiest Lisboners.
“Because the coming of Adelina Patti to Lisbon, the thirty contos of the signature will not be distributed in installments a little superior to those of the Grand Opéra or Covent Garden, served by a public that groans painfully at each deadline of their contributions and that, to put on “suede” gloves, eat lunch sadly coffee with milk from the pot”.
(Beldemonio, 1885)
However, there was an open debate in the press. If for some her performance was unquestionable, for others the artist’s age was already felt in the voice.
There were pessimistic versions running around that gave Patti an entry into decay; his first performance in Lisbon was a brilliant denial of these false rumors, a triumphant affirmation of the complete plenitude in which his privileged talents as an artist still reside.
(Lobato, 1886b)
If you tell me that Patti was a brilliant and amazing singer, I truly believe it, because finally, great reputations are not only made under the empire of critics, and in the way of the remarkable artist, in her method of singing, in her way from phrasing, in his style, in the timbre of his voice, there are also the reflexes of a star of the first magnitude.
(Dantas, 1886b)
In any case, the success was undeniable.
At the time of departure, “many admirers of the famous singer went to the train station to say goodbye…” («Adelina Patti», 1886b). She spent two days in Paris where she required “the services of her dentist to enamel her teeth…” and went “from Paris, to her castle in Wales…” («Adelina Patti», 1886a).
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