Adelina Patti was the reigning diva of the latter half of the nineteenth century. A guaranteed audience draw from the very start, she burst onto the concert scene in her mid-teens and proceeded to dominate the vocal world for the duration of her career.
The daughter of two Italian opera singers, Patti was born while they were touring in Madrid on February 19, 1843. She studied voice with her half-brother, and was soon giving concert tours with the violinist Ole Bull, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and others. At the age of 16 she sang the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in New York City, and then toured the United States, capitalizing on her youth as an element of spectacle. In 1861, she made her debut at Covent Garden as Amina in La Sonnambula; London, and that theater specifically, would remain the center of her career.
Her voice was described as being very pure and with great flexibility. Because of this, she was best suited to playing vulnerable and ebullient young girls, and continued to do so even in the later stages of her career. As she matured she phased in a number of heavier roles, but she never stepped outside her natural vocal limits. The operas of Gounod, which she sang under his direction, were particular triumphs for Patti, and in 1876 she was the first to sing the role of Aida in London. An enormously successful 1879 tour of the United States helped cement her already considerable fame.
Patti's only real failure was an 1885 attempt at Bizet's Carmen — a role that has stumped many a famous singer. But the setback was inconsequential; she continued to appear with great success in Paris, Milan, Brussels, Monte Carlo, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, and Lisbon.