Semester of Graduation

August 2024

Degree

Master of Music (MM)

Department

Musicology

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Of the many prima donnas of the nineteenth century, Adelina Patti (1843–1919) stands out as one of the most successful, with a fifty-year international concertizing career. Biographers across multiple languages have covered her career in great depth, but devote little attention to her close friendships. Herman Klein (in The Reign of Patti [1920]) and John Cone (in Adelina Patti: Queen of Hearts [1993]), for instance, claim that Patti was known by many, but understood by few. One who does seem to have understood her and developed a close relationship with her was Giulia Valda (1850–1925), herself a professional singer, if far from Patti’s caliber. We know close to nothing about this friendship, however. The biographies of Patti suggest that the two singers first met on their United States tour with the Abbey-Grau Opera Company (1889–1890); but say nothing about their friendship and thus cannot explain how Valda came to be one of Patti’s most intimate friends.

The answers emerge from a collection of letters hitherto unknown to scholars. A substantial portion of this correspondence is held at Louisiana State University’s Hill Memorial Library and consists of fifteen handwritten letters from Patti to Valda spanning the years 1889–1891. An additional, much longer letter (dated 1890) is held at Yale University’s Irving S. Gilmore Music Library. These letters are testimony to Patti and Valda’s growing, intimate friendship and show how an initially formal tone quickly morphed into a loving one. Still, these letters leave open questions about the professional context of their relationship, questions that can be answered at least in part on the basis of other primary sources, such as performance schedules of opera houses, newspaper articles, and an unpublished biography by Patti’s goddaughter. As a group, these documents cast a new light on the personality of one of the most prominent opera stars of the time, whose career is well known, but whose private life is still insufficiently understood.

Date

7-26-2024

Committee Chair

Giger, Andreas

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