Lina Cavalieri: The Life of Opera's Greatest Beauty, 1874-1944

209 Pages·2003·4.991 MB·English

by  Paul Fryer

LINA CAVALIERI

L C
INA AVALIERI
The Life of Opera’s Greatest
Beauty, ¡874–¡944
Paul Fryer and Olga Usova
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSONLINECATALOG
Fryer,Paul,¡955–
Lina Cavalieri :the life of opera’s greatest beauty,¡874–¡944 /
Paul Fryer and Olga Usova.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
Discography:p.
Filmography:p.
ISBN-¡3:978-0-7864-1685-1
(softcover :50# alkaline paper)
[¡.] Cavalieri,Lina,¡874. [2.] Sopranos (Singers)—Biography.
[I. Title.]
ML420.C388F7 2004 782.¡'092B—dc22 200302369¡
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2004 Paul Fryer and Olga Usova.All rights reserved
No part ofthis book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means,electronic or mechanical,including photocopying
or recording,or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover photograph:Cavalieri as Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata(Reutlinger Studio,
Paris ¡90¡,from the collections ofthe author and Svetlana Vlasova)
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company,Inc.,Publishers
Box 6¡¡,Je›erson,North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To Andrei,Gleb,Danila and Nigel
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Historic
Singers Trust: and the invaluable assistance of Emilia Rudaya, Mikhail Talalai,
Alexander Pozdnyakov (of Lenfilm), Mike Mashon (Library of Congress), Robert
Tuggle (Metropolitan Opera Archives), Amedeo Gigli, Marvin Lyons, Ulla Tillan-
der-Godenhielm, Dr.William McRae, Erio Tripodi, Anna Shoulgat, Tom Kauf-
man,Bob Kosovsky (New York Public Library Performing Arts),Barbara Karn,Stella
Wright (Massenet Society,London),Kevin Brownlow,Edward Morgan,Pierre Vidal
(Biblioteque Musee de l’Opera),Alice Bloch,Charlotte Revollon-Lubert (Opera Monte
Carlo), Marcella Ilari, Patrizia Lazzari, Svetlana Vlasova; the sta› of the British
Library Newspaper Library;the sta› of the State Museum of Theatre and Music,
St.Petersburg;and the sta› of the Music and Motion Picture Divisions of the Library
of Congress, Washington D.C.
vi
C
ONTENTS
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
I. Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
II. The Queen of Variety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
III. The Opera Star I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
IV. The Opera Star II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
V. The Film Star . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
VI. Endings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Chronology of Operatic Roles and Appearances. . . 167
Filmography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Discography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
vii

P
REFACE
Even the most casual observer who happened across a reference to “the most
beautiful woman in the world”might be intrigued enough to find out who she was.
The authors of this,the first English-language biography of Lina Cavalieri,certainly
were. Starting from entirely opposite points, they became captivated by the rags-
to-riches’ story of this woman who rose from the streets of Rome to international
fame as a cabaret singer, an operatic diva and a silent movie star. Lina Cavalieri
became an icon of beauty and fashion: a media personality whose image appeared
on postcards all over the world,who enjoyed notorious love a›airs,entering into a
scandalous liaison with a Russian prince and marrying into one of the world’s rich-
est families.And yes,as the numerous photographs published here prove,she was
very beautiful.
Cavalieri was one of the greatest stars of her era:Her reputation filled theaters
from St.Petersburg to London and Paris.She shared the stage of New York’s Met-
ropolitan Opera House with Enrico Caruso and was the first major opera star to
appear in a feature-length film.Yet today,she is almost forgotten.
Distinguishing between fact and fiction in the examination of such a colorful
life story has been a problematic task. Much of what has been previously written
about Cavalieri originates from unreliable,anecdotal sources:Her self-styled auto-
biography,Le Mie Verità (Rome,¡936),littered with inaccuracies,has provided the
major source for most previous accounts. This book attempts the first scholarly
assessment of her life and career,accessing,for the first time in English translation,
a wealth of material relating to her hugely successful career in pre–Revolutionary
Russia.For example,the largely adulatory accounts of her stage personality and per-
formance technique which exist in several sets of memoirs and later in studio-gen-
erated publicity material have been replaced in this study by the far more probing
critical assessments of some of her colleagues and the many writers who dismissed
the force of her sheer physical presence to provide us with a vivid picture of a singing
actress of distinction and considerable potential. Some questions about her life
remain unanswered,but this has only added to the intrigue,and knowledge of the
star suggests that this is exactly what she would have wanted.Here we can witness
again the opera star that so impressed Puccini in the New York premiere of Manon
Lescautand of whom Massenet conceded the value of her beauty gave her the right
to make mistakes from time to time.
In an era in which crossover performances from one genre or medium to another
1