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At Paris, after the first act, the sensation was indescribable, musicians, ministers, poets, and fashionable beauties all concurring in the general chorus of acclamation; while the genial Auber, the composer of so many delightful operas, and one of the greatest authorities, by his experience and judgment, on all musical matters, was so enchanted that he declared she had made him young again, and for several days he could scarcely talk on any other subject but Adelina Patti and opera.
I thanked her affectionately afterwards, and she left the theatre escorted by the students, who followed her carriage for a long way, shouting over and over again, "Long live Adelina Patti!" Thanks to that evening's performance I was able to pay the insurance company. I was ruined all the same, or very nearly so.
I could see, as we waited, that the same idea had flashed over Kennedy's mind as over my own. It was now three or four days since the papers had reported the strange kidnapping of Gennaro's five-year-old daughter Adelina, his only child, and the sending of a demand for ten thousand dollars ransom, signed, as usual, with the mystic Black Hand a name to conjure with in blackmail and extortion.
It included a report of the debut of my boy-and-girl companion, Adelina Patti, when she made her first appearance in opera at the Academy of Music. But, as the saying is, I did not "catch on." There might be a more promising opening in Washington, and thither I repaired.
For a time he felt so sure that she meant to have him that he began bringing his greatest friend, Edward Ruff of the college football team, of whom Spillikins was very proud, up to the Lightleighs' residence. He specially wanted Adelina and Edward to be great friends, so that Adelina and he might ask Edward up to the house after he was married.
"It is my theory of this case that if we could locate this Paoli we could solve the kidnapping of little Adelina Gennaro very quickly. That's his picture." Kennedy and I bent over to look at it, and I started in surprise. It was my evil-looking friend with the scar on his cheek.
Adelina Patti's first husband was Henri, Marquis de Caux, an equerry to the Empress Eugénie, from whom she was separated and subsequently divorced; and, on June 10, 1886, she married Ernesto Nicolini, the famous tenor singer.
But, some one will argue, with the passing of bel canto what will become of the operas of Mozart, Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti? Who will sing them? Fear not, lover of the golden age of song, bel canto is not passing as swiftly as that. Singers will continue to be born into this world who are able to cope with the floridity of this music, for they are born, not made. Amelita Galli-Curci will have her successors, just as Adelina Patti had hers. Singers of this kind begin to sing naturally in their infancy and they continue to sing, just sing.... One touch of drama or emotion and their voices disappear. Remember Nellie Melba's sad experience with Siegfried. The great Mario had scarcely studied singing (one authority says that he had taken a few lessons of Meyerbeer!) when he made his début in Robert, le Diable and there is no evidence that he studied very much afterwards. Melba, herself, spent less than a year with Mme. Marchesi in preparation for her opera career. Mme. Galli-Curci asserts that she has had very little to do with professors and I do not think Mme. Tetrazzini passed her youth in mastering vocalizzi. As a matter of fact she studied singing only six months. Adelina Patti told Dr. Hanslick that she had sung Una voce poco f
Gennaro had already drawn from his bank ten crisp one-thousand-dollar bills, and already had a copy of Il Progresso in which he had hidden the money between the sheets. "Mr. Kennedy," he said, "I am going to meet them to-night. They may kill me. See, I have provided myself with a pistol I shall fight, too, if necessary for my little Adelina. But if it is only money they want, they shall have it."
He wrote to my wife and asked her to look after his girls, 'For God's sake, Lina, see if you can help Alice Wensleydale's a perfect brute. That was the first light we had on the situation, for Adelina had long before washed her hands of him; and we knew that she hated us. Well, we tried; of course we tried. But so long as her husband lived Alice would have nothing to say to any of us.
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