The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-10-01
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS


 she was thought by many to be the greatest soprano 0 fthe nineteenth cen tury, and no one has yet arrived in the twentieth to steal away the honor.
 
 What a careeri My, the material for a bigraphy! l hope some one with lit- erary and historic ability will take up the task. Her life reads like romance. There will be no need for any chroni- cler to invent situations for the simple story is stranger than fiction. Every thing about her career was unusual A child of such parents was preor- dained to an artistic life, and her father, Sicilian, was a good tenor, and her Roman mother was noted prima donna. -Adelina Adel Juanna Maria, for this was her baptismal name was born l in Madrid, February 19, 184S, as the opera company to which her parents belonged were filling an engagement in the famous Spanish city.
 Is there any wonder that the bfby grew up to be tempermental and had temper? Luigi Arditi, in My Remini- scences," who knew her from girlhood, relates that she could enter the room as bright as a ray of sunshine, all smiles and sweetness: "but if any one had the misfortune to ruffle the pretty brows or thwart my Lady Wilful her dark eyes would flash, her tiny fist would n1n speedily gather across the surface of her laughing face and burst forth in torrents of tears almost as quickly as a flash of lightning"
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 While 1t is true that she was born in Spain, when only three years old she crossed the Atlantic with her parents who followed an impressario to New York, where she was brought up Few know it, but she looked on English as her mother tongue, but she did not for get her Italian, and she also learned to speak French Spanish, and German fluently, although according to Finck she did not, like operatic artists of to- day, need these languages on the stage, as she nearly always sang in Italian. 1 Now in this article I only mean to give some biographical details, for Patti in spite of the great fortune which came to her world triumphs in concert and on the operatic stage in l her childhood knew biting poverty, for the impressario in whose wake her parents came to America became a bankrupt and disappeared without paying the salaries due. The company was disbanded, and there was no more Italian opera in the great American city to give them an engagement. | ss The bad luck came at a time when she was hardly old enough to realize the seriousness of the blow which had fallen upon the large Patti family, for she sang on from morning to night, while her father was busy carrying one thing after another to the pawn shop. It was at this desperate time when hope had fled from Salvatore, her Lfather, and Catherine, her mother of I getting contract to appear themselves that the clear child-voice of little Ade- lima gave them an inspiration.
 Now let Patti speak for herself. Here Is what she told the famous pr. Hans- lick in 1877 and he set it down in his "Musilalische Stationen," which ap- peared In 1880: "An ear for music, a gift for song and a delight in it, came to me surprisingly early wherefore received as a mere child lessons in singing from my stepbrother, piano les sons from my sister Carlotta." Car lotta who was a few years older first trained as pianist, later devoting her self to vocal music, but in spite of her great ability, for she had a remarkably prevented her from remaining on the operatic stage.)
 Continuing she says: "As little child I was already possessed by a frantic love of music and the theatre In fact all through her life the stage absorbed her. for friend said of her 'T have never perceived in Odelina the least interest in the higher problems 1 not even beiles lettres." A book was seldom on her table, and he could not even interest her in the lightest of al forms of intellectual exercise nove reading. I am glad this trait escaped Arnold Bonnet or he would have pillo. ried her in one of his caustic critiques
 
 But let Patti continue her story: q sat in the opera house every evening when my mother sang; every melody every gesture. was impressed on me indelibly When the performance was over and I had been taken home anG put to bed, got up again steathily and by light of the night lamp played over all the scenes had seen A rec mantle belonging to my father and ar old hat of my mothers trimmed witt feathers served me as material for di. verse costumes, and thus acted danced, twittered through all the orperas, barefooted, but romanticall, attired.
 In later life she was glad that she had done so for she learned how she had kept the wolf from the family dooI of the Pattis'. She was only sever years old when she was asked to ap. : pear as a concert singer, and she did it with all the naivete of a child Here is her description: T was placed ir |