DOCUMENTING DIVAS: ADELINA PATTI AND CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 1860-1876

Kathryn Jancaus

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

December 2020

Committee:

Eftychia Papanikolaou, Advisor

Ryan Ebright

© 2020

Kathryn Jancaus

All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT

Eftychia Papanikolaou, Advisor

When Swedish soprano Jenny Lind (1820-1887) came to the United States in 1850, the ecstatic craze surrounding her arrival belied a larger trend which was taking root among the

American press and public: a fascination with the lives of celebrity opera singers. One of the

Lind enthusiasts was a college student named George P. Upton (1834-1919), who later became the music critic for the Chicago Tribune. In his work over the following decades, Upton continued to take a vivid interest in the lives, careers, and personalities of prima donnas, writing about them with an intensely personal style that was common in newspapers of his time. As journalists for the Tribune provided news about opera stars to their readers in Chicago, they not only shaped the public images of these singers but also promoted the appreciation of classical music as a cause for civic pride in their relatively young city.

In this study I examine how George P. Upton and other journalists published in the

Chicago Tribune wrote about two star sopranos of the mid to late nineteenth century: Adelina

Patti (1843-1919) and Clara Louise Kellogg (1842-1916). I bring together newspaper articles from the years 1860 through 1876 and use secondary literature to place the critics’ approach in context. In each case study, I delve into historical perspectives reflected in this music criticism to trace how journalists articulated concepts of celebrity, genius, nationalism, and gender. I especially draw from scholarship on prima donnas by Hilary Poriss, Kristin Turner, and

Katherine Preston as I explore how music critics of the time used the lenses of the nineteenth century to observe the light of these bright musical stars and reflect on American society. iv

To my dear friends from town and gown in Bowling Green,

with hope that we will be together again soon. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the many people who made it possible for me to complete this thesis.

First, my deepest thanks to my advisor, Dr. Effie Papanikolaou, for your support throughout the entire writing process. From office chats to Webex meetings, your insightful and unwavering guidance has encouraged me to keep moving forward during a difficult time.

Special thanks to Dr. Ryan Ebright for the clarity you brought to my thesis from beginning to end, and for all of your helpful feedback. Thank you to Dr. Mary Natvig and Dr.

Arne Spohr for conversations about my research that sparked new ideas. Thank you to Dr.

Robert Satterlee for your assistance with the thesis submission process.

I would like to thank the librarians who assisted me in finding materials at the Jerome

Library, the Newberry Library, and the Ela Area Public Library.

I would also like to thank my classmates Kelly, Rachel, Alyssa, Meg, Lindsay, and

Monica for your friendship, near or far. Thank you to the many friends who regularly asked about my progress and prayed for me. Finally, thank you to my brother Joe, for furthering our shared interest in American history, and to my parents, for being there for me through everything.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER I. GEORGE P. UPTON AND MUSIC CRITICISM IN CHICAGO, 1860-1876 1

Introduction: George P. Upton on Opera Stars ...... 1

Methods and Aims ...... 2

The Life and Works of George P. Upton ...... 6

Classical Music in Nineteenth-Century Chicago ...... 8

Music Criticism in American Newspapers ...... 12

Literature on Topics in Nineteenth-Century Music ...... 15

CHAPTER II. JOURNALISM ABOUT ADELINA PATTI IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE 20

Patti’s Voice and Performing Abilities ...... 22

Her Appearance ...... 28

Her Personal Life ...... 31

Her Character ...... 35

Her Finances ...... 41

CHAPTER III. JOURNALISM ABOUT CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG IN THE CHICAGO

TRIBUNE ...... 50

Kellogg’s Voice and Performing Abilities ...... 52

Her Appearance ...... 64

Her Personal Life ...... 68

Her Character ...... 76

Her Finances ...... 79

CHAPTER IV. Conclusion ...... 85 vii

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 90

DISCOGRAPHY ...... 95

APPENDIX A. ICONOGRAPHY ...... 96

APPENDIX B. THE UPTON SCRAPBOOKS (NEWBERRY LIBRARY, CHICAGO) ..... 105

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1 Kellogg’s roles reviewed in the Chicago Tribune, 1860-1876 ...... 57

1

CHAPTER I. GEORGE P. UPTON AND MUSIC CRITICISM IN CHICAGO, 1860-1876

Introduction: George P. Upton on Opera Stars

“I was a Freshman in Brown University when I caught the Jenny Lind fever.” 1

Thus writes music critic George P. Upton (1834-1919) in the early pages of his 1908 book Musical Memories. Upton was a college student when, in September of 1850, Swedish soprano Jenny Lind began her famous tour of the United States. He saw her perform in Boston and in Providence, and fifty-eight years later could still write, “my recollections of the subsequent concert in Providence are as vivid as if it had taken place yesterday. The student body, and apparently the entire population of the city, were infected with the Jenny Lind fever.”2

Upton goes on to describe the public’s obsession with this singer both in Europe and in the

United States: buoyed by the intense publicity generated by her manager Phineas T. Barnum, who “flooded the newspapers with portraits, sketches, and letters,”3 Lind became the foremost musical celebrity of her day. Upton would reflect on her well in his Musical Memories, writing that “her singing still remains my ideal of the highest exposition of the art of song.”4

In the years after he saw Lind perform, Upton finished his studies at Brown University, worked as a teacher in Massachusetts for one year, and then in 1855 moved to the recently established city of Chicago, where he took a job as a reporter. He joined the staff of the Chicago

Tribune in 1861 and would later become the paper’s music critic, eventually moving up the ranks as an editor. Upton made Chicago his home for the rest of his long career as a journalist and author, and over the course of his lifetime he became one of the city’s best-known music critics

1 George Upton, Musical Memories: My Recollections of Celebrities of the Half Century 1850-1900 (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1908), 18. 2 Upton, Musical Memories, 19. 3 Upton, Musical Memories, 19-20. 4 Upton, Musical Memories, 17. 2 and advocates for classical music. While he covered many different arts events in the papers, he is best known today for his articles and books focused on cultivating an appreciation for classical music among the Chicago public. He was not trained in music, but had a colorful writing style and a familiarity with the Western art music tradition that he brought to bear in his journalism on local, national, and international musical happenings.

Upton’s writings on musical life in Chicago encompass a vast array of topics. In his music criticism and his book Musical Memories, one particular facet of his writing style that stands out is the way he vividly describes solo performers. Jenny Lind was the first major musician whom he remembered hearing, according to his book, and Upton’s experience of the explosion of public interest in Lind seems to have paved the way for his future writing on the musical celebrities of succeeding decades. When writing on prima donnas, leading men in opera, and instrumental virtuosi, Upton, like many journalists of his time, often described aspects of their personalities, physical attributes, and relational lives that today would be handled with care or not discussed at all in newspapers. These types of personal comments were bestowed with particular frequency on opera’s leading women, who were frequently mentioned in newspapers because of opera’s centrality to classical music performance during the mid to late nineteenth century. These singers became celebrities whose public images were shaped over time by media coverage, arguably more famous than any other performers of classical music at the time. For these reasons, although many other performers also figured into journalism of the period, this study is focused on prima donnas, who were given special emphasis in music criticism.

Methods and Aims

In this study, I examine how George P. Upton and other journalists published in the

Chicago Tribune write about two star sopranos who were almost exact contemporaries: Adelina 3

Patti (1843-1919) and Clara Louise Kellogg (1842-1916). I organize my thoughts into two case studies centered around these singers, which makes it possible to focus on the specific ways critics wrote about them as individuals as well as highlight differences in how they were discussed. I divide each case study into five thematic areas which were commonly mentioned in the Tribune: performing abilities, appearance, personal life, character, and finances. While comments related to these five areas are intertwined in the actual music criticism, separating them here allows for a focused examination of each category.

Journalism about Patti and Kellogg in these five areas reveals some commonalities between the two singers—such as the fact that both were subjected to intense scrutiny in the press—but also some significant differences in the ways critics thought about their lives and careers. For example, critics wrote about Adelina Patti as a (former) child prodigy, a European who was performing in Europe, a performer of foreign-language opera, and a financial dependent of male relatives. In contrast, critics wrote about Clara Louise Kellogg as a young adult who achieved fame through hard work, an American performing in the United States, a performer of foreign- and English-language opera, and a fairly independent woman with good business sense. As is evident from these generalized differences, examining criticism about these two prima donnas often reveals connections to overarching concepts such as celebrity culture, musical genius, virtuosity, nationalism, and societal gender expectations, which I weave into my discussion as they appear and reference again in my conclusion.

The music criticism which I explore comes from the Chicago Tribune during the years

1860 through 1876. Because newspaper articles at the time were frequently unattributed, I originally decided to focus on this time period in order to reflect the years in which George P.

Upton was most likely writing the Tribune’s music criticism (either as a general reporter or as 4 music critic). I found, however, that the paper also included many articles reprinted from other publications or written by correspondents in other cities during this period, and I included these articles in my study because they made up a significant percentage of the Tribune’s music journalism. These articles expanded my study to present a wider picture of music criticism than articles written only by Upton would provide, although I still limited my study to the Chicago

Tribune and did not consider music criticism from other Chicago publications active at the time.

I chose to end the period of my consideration in 1876 in part because the music critic W.S.B.

Mathews joined the Tribune’s staff in 1877, which made it more difficult to determine if articles were written by Upton after that point in time.5

Additionally, I was especially inspired to focus on this eventful period in the city’s musical life after viewing Upton’s collection of programs and advertisements for concerts in

Chicago from the years 1860-1876, which is now housed at the Newberry Library.6 Seeing these programs and advertisements helped me become acquainted with the activities of local musicians across a variety of genres: these included opera of many types, chamber music, salon concerts, solo instrumental music, sacred music, choral music, band music, vaudeville, and blackface minstrelsy. Many of these musicians were artists whose names I rarely encountered in secondary literature, and their activities revealed a dynamic environment in which genres that could be classified as popular music and amateur classical music thrived concurrently with classical music performance in public venues. Some of the musicians featured in these programs and advertisements were nationally and internationally recognized, including soprano Carlotta Patti

5 Mark McKnight, “Music Criticism in the United States and Canada up to the Second World War,” in The Cambridge History of Music Criticism, edited by Christopher Dingle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 310. 6 George P. Upton and Karleton Spalding Hackett, [Scrapbooks of Programs of Chicago Concerts During the Years 1860-1876], Chicago, 1861. 5

(1840-1889, the sister of Adelina Patti) and Clara Louise Kellogg, and I include photographs of advertisements for their appearances in Appendix B.

The 1860s and 1870s were turbulent years for the people of Chicago, musically and otherwise. The city’s residents felt the impacts of the Civil War from 1861 to 1865; the fire of

1871 displaced many and destroyed vast commercial areas; and then the rebuilding process after the fire brought the city into a time of accelerated economic and population growth, despite an international financial depression known as the Panic of 1873. These events, particularly the fire, had widespread ramifications for music. As Chicago’s citizens recovered and time went on, advocates of classical music such as George P. Upton promoted its performance as a cause for civic pride. Opera was a central part of the classical music world at the time, and journalism in the Chicago Tribune about celebrity singers such as Adelina Patti, Clara Louise Kellogg, Pauline

Lucca, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Caroline Richings, Christine Nilsson, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, and Thérèse Tietjens, to name only a few, reveals the intense interest in all things related to the genre’s best-known stars. Though extensive music criticism was written about all of these sopranos, I chose to study journalism about Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg because they were both well-known in the United States throughout the entire period of the 1860s to 1870s and because of how journalists covered the above-mentioned contrasts in their career paths.

My methodology for this study consisted of searching a database of historical newspapers and categorizing articles about Patti and Kellogg based on their contents. My digital access to the

Chicago Tribune on the database ProQuest Historical Newspapers was provided by the Ela Area

Public Library. Based on my decision to focus on Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg, I searched this database for any articles mentioning either of their names and then read the articles about each singer in chronological order. Noting the contents of the articles and topics which 6 commonly recurred, I organized excerpts from the articles into the five thematic areas mentioned above, with several articles containing multiple excerpts that fit into different thematic areas.

This process served as the basis for assembling the material for my two case studies on these singers, and secondary literature by contemporary scholars helped me to discuss my findings in the context of the time.

The Life and Works of George P. Upton

Though he spent the majority of his life in Chicago, music critic George P. Upton was born in New England.7 He had English ancestry and belonged to the seventh generation of his family to live in this country. His father Daniel was a millwright who provided a fairly affluent lifestyle for their family.8 They lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts, near Boston, and George P.

Upton earned a four-year Master of Arts degree from Brown University in 1854. His degree involved studies of classical languages, German, math, English literature, rhetoric, history, and areas that were then called “natural philosophy” and “intellectual and moral philosophy”; choosing this program rather than the two other business- and trade-oriented degrees that Brown offered prepared him for his career as a journalist and author writing on diverse topics.9 Upton was already known for his writing by the end of his college years, winning the title “Poet of his

Class.” Music was not part of his schooling, but he learned how to read scores and became musically literate through personal study, and he enjoyed attending concerts in his free time, especially those of soprano Jenny Lind that occurred during his college years.10 After graduating,

7 Mary Ann Feldman thoroughly reconstructs Upton’s biography in her 1983 dissertation; I use her account as a guide for describing his life here. Mary Ann Feldman, “George P. Upton: Journalist, Music Critic and Mentor to Early Chicago” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1983). 8 Feldman, 95. 9 Feldman, 93 and 98. 10 Feldman, 96-99. 7 his first job was as a teacher in Plymouth, Massachusetts during the school year of 1854-1855, but he left that position the following autumn to move to Chicago.

Upton’s first newspaper job in Chicago was with The Daily Native Citizen, and the next year he joined the staff of the Evening Journal, where he covered cultural events around the city and soon established a music column.11 In 1861 he began working for the Chicago Tribune as city editor.12 He spent some time as a Civil War correspondent, but returned to Chicago because of illness and served as city editor again beginning in 1863.13 Upton kept on writing articles and editing during the following decade, and from 1867 to 1868 he wrote a satirical arts and society column in which he assumed the fictional persona of Peregrine Pickle, who was named after the main character of a 1751 novel.14 Upton became the Tribune’s official drama and music editor and book reviewer in 1868; he began by writing about all of the arts, then eventually narrowed his focus to music as other writers joined the staff. He became an associate editor in 1872 and rose in the ranks to become lead editor from the 1890s to 1905, during which years he wrote less music criticism so that he could focus on editing the paper and publishing his own books on music for general audiences. He partially retired in 1905, but still worked on editorial tasks and occasionally wrote for the Tribune until the end of his life in 1919.15

The complete list of Upton’s works includes numerous newspaper articles; several articles for magazines; an 1871 play called The Century Plant; or, Chicago in 1970; and books for the general public and for young people on classical music genres, composers, performers,

11 Feldman, 100-103. 12 This was an abolitionist, Lincoln-supporting newspaper run by Joseph Medill and others. Feldman, 104. 13 He also married Sarah Elizabeth Bliss in November of 1862. Feldman, 107-108. 14 See Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (London: D. Wilson, 1751). Upton’s collected writings as Peregrine Pickle were published in 1869 and are now available online; see George P. Upton, Letters of Peregrine Pickle (Chicago: The Western News Company, 1869), https://archive.org/details/lettersofperegri00upto/page/n8/mode/2up. 15 Feldman, 109-110. 8 and works, and on Chicago’s history.16 He also edited and translated a number of books and other works. Additionally, Upton collected the aforementioned concert programs from the years

1860 to 1876, which are preserved in three scrapbooks in the special collections of the Newberry

Library in Chicago. The Newberry Library and the Chicago Historical Society hold significant collections of Upton’s correspondence, his books, and other items provided by him, including a

Beethoven manuscript fragment. Upton’s writing, scrapbooks, letters, and library donations are fascinating sources that provide a window into one writer’s experience of classical music in nineteenth-century Chicago, and they feature briefly in my study.

Classical Music in Nineteenth-Century Chicago

Like many Midwestern cities, Chicago was officially founded in the nineteenth century: it was recognized as a town in 1833 and as a city in 1837. When Upton moved there in 1860 it had been incorporated for less than twenty years and recorded a population of 112,172, making it the country’s ninth most populous city. By the year 1900 its population would grow to 1,099,850 residents, making it the third most populous city in the country at that time.17

The area that became Chicago was first inhabited by the Illinois and Potawatomi peoples.

The first Europeans to travel there were explorers Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet in

1673, and in 1783 New Orleans citizen Jean-Baptiste Du Sable established a trading post there that was soon protected by Fort Dearborn. In 1812 many buildings were destroyed in an armed conflict between the settlers and the Potawatomi people, after which the settlement was rebuilt.

The community grew to a population of 350 by 1830. The city of Chicago was then incorporated

16 For a complete list of Upton’s books, articles, and edited volumes, see Feldman, 388ff. One item of interest that does not neatly fit in the categories I have listed above is his book Woman in Music (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1880), in which Upton writes mostly about the women related to the male composers of the Western classical music tradition. 17 Katherine Preston, Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 31-36. 9 in 1837 and expanded rapidly as it was connected to other urban centers by canal and railroad throughout the 1840s and 1850s, becoming a center for the livestock, meatpacking, farm machinery, and lumber industries. These industries would experience a boom during the Civil

War, when they produced supplies for Union troops. By the late nineteenth century the population of Chicago had grown exponentially, and the city faced major issues with sanitation and housing conditions for the working class. The Great Chicago Fire occurred on October 8,

1871, killing 300 people and displacing around 90,000. Residential and commercial areas were destroyed, but factory and industrial centers were mostly protected. The city’s residents rebuilt and experienced a time of economic prosperity in the following two decades, hosting the

World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (which commemorated Columbus’s first American voyage four hundred years in the past) and navigating civic and social reforms in the 1890s.18

As the city grew, its citizens brought and created entertainments of diverse types that reflected their cultural backgrounds and interests as well as the new realities of urban life. In

Musical Memories, George P. Upton writes that the music of the early settlers in the 1830s consisted largely of fiddle tunes and piano music played to accompany dancing and singing or on their own, as well as music sung in church services.19 He also mentions a Black professional musician named Wilson P. Perry from that period who publicly advertised his availability to perform music for “assemblies, balls, and parties” in 1834.20 The first public entertainment to charge admission, Upton writes, was a performance by a fire-eater named Mr. Bowers on

February 24, 1834, and this was followed by other performances of magic and ventriloquism.

18 “Chicago,” in Volume 3: The Midwest, vol. 3 of Cities of the United States, ed. Kristy A. Harper, 6th ed (Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, 2009), 15-30. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/ebooks/ebc/cius. 19 Upton, Musical Memories, 211. 20 Upton, Musical Memories, 212-213. The advertisement is dated January 7, 1834; Upton does not indicate which publication the advertisement came from. The advertisement reads: “Notice—The subscriber begs leave to inform the inhabitants of Chicago and its vicinity that he will be ready at all times to furnish music at assemblies, balls, and parties on as reasonable terms as can be furnished in this place. Wilson P. Perry (Man of color).” 10

The first concert to charge admission was on June 19, 1834, but Upton found no other information about it; the following month a music school was opened by a Miss Wythe, and other music schools, singing societies, and church choirs sprang up in the following years.21 The first circus arrived in 1836 to great acclaim, and theatres began opening in 1837, although Upton notes that “[t]here was considerable prejudice against theatres at that time”—police had to keep down fights, crass criticism was shouted during performances, and managers had to work hard to eventually persuade women to attend.22 The first minstrel troupe to perform in the city, managed by Phineas T. Barnum, came in 1840, and by the end of the 1840s there were lectures, art exhibitions, a museum, outdoor performances by wind bands, concerts by a guitarist known as

Signor Martinez, concerts of famous singing families, and a visit by a professional pianist named

Richard Hoffman.23

The first opera performed in Chicago was a traveling troupe’s rendition of Vincenzo

Bellini’s La Sonnambula in 1850, and Upton writes that it was well-attended by a crowd containing many well-dressed ladies and gentlemen. That opera season, however, was cut short after only a couple of nights when a fire sprang up during a performance and the audience had to evacuate the theatre; fires would be a common occurrence throughout the decades that followed.24 In that year the first Philharmonic Society was also organized, and the rest of the

1850s saw the formation of a vocal quartet, the founding of many German singing societies or

Männerchöre, the construction of new theatres, and the gradual growth of opera performed in foreign languages or in English by touring companies.25 Among several theatres built in the city,

21 Upton, Musical Memories, 213-214. 22 Upton, Musical Memories, 216-218. 23 Upton, Musical Memories, 219. Upton notes that Hoffman would later perform with Jenny Lind, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Hans von Bülow. 24 Upton, Musical Memories, 226-227. Upton mentions that this theatre, managed by Mr. Rice, would be rebuilt into Tremont Hall after the fire, and that was where Adelina Patti first appeared in concert. 25 Upton, Musical Memories, 222-226. 11 the Crosby Opera House was especially important as a home for opera and entertainments of all stripes: it featured opera in foreign languages, in English, and ranging from serious to comic; spectacles and extravaganzas; blackface minstrelsy; concerts and balls; and also housed galleries of visual art. It was inaugurated on April 20, 1865 (after a three-day delay because of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln) by an opera company that included Clara Louise

Kellogg, although she did not sing in the opening night performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. 26

The theatre underwent an $80,00027 renovation in the summer and fall of 1871. It was finished on October 7, and then completely destroyed the very next day in the Great Chicago Fire. After the fire, Upton writes that “not a concert hall, theatre, museum, music school, or studio was left,” but the city’s residents eventually rebuilt and created a new hub for opera and all of the arts in the magnificent Auditorium Theatre, finished in 1889.28

Several scholars have recently explored the city’s diverse musical traditions around the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, which ranged from opera and symphonic music to jazz and gospel.29 European immigrants continued to arrive and bring their

26 Upton, Musical Memories, 237-239. The Italian singer Carlotta Carozzi-Zucchi (1831-1898) was the prima donna on that first evening in the new opera house. The company was managed by Jacob Grau, a well-known impresario, and Upton lists the rest of the singers in his book. 27 Adjusting for inflation, this amount is roughly equivalent to $1.75 million in 2020. “WolframAlpha.com.” Wolfram, 2020. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US%2480000+%281871+US+dollars%29. 28 Upton, Musical Memories, 249-252. 29 These works include: Amy Absher, The Black Musician and the White City: Race and Music in Chicago, 1900- 1967 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014); Mark Clague, “Chicago Counterpoint: The Auditorium Theater Building and the Civic Imagination” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2002); and “The Industrial Evolution of the Arts: Chicago's Auditorium Building (1889—) as Cultural Machine,” Opera Quarterly 22 no. 3-4 (Summer-Autumn 2006): 477-511; Katie Graber, “American Dreams: Opera and Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Chicago” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2010); David M. Guion, “From Yankee Doodle Thro' to Handel's Largo: Music at the World's Columbian Exposition,” College Music Symposium 24, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 81-96; William Howland Kenney, Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Robert Marovich, A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015); Ann McKinley, “Music for the Dedication Ceremonies of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1892,” American Music 3, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 42-51; Michael D. Nicholsen, “Identity, Nationalism, and Irish Traditional Music in Chicago, 1867-1900,” New Hibernia Review 13, no. 4 (2009): 111-126; Derek Vaillant, Sounds of Reform: Progressivism & Music in Chicago, 1873-1935 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003). 12 folk music traditions to the city, and the progressive reformers of the late 1800s and early 1900s worked to unify and engage industrial neighborhoods by encouraging the performance of this vernacular and popular music along with classical music at social events.30 Chicago developed as a “city of neighborhoods,” or to put it more plainly, a segregated city, as Amy Absher explains; while many African-American musicians moved there to pursue their careers in the early twentieth century, they were largely excluded from performing in symphonies, on the radio, or in clubs outside of majority Black neighborhoods during that time.31 Pioneers of jazz and gospel music developed these new styles in Chicago during the early twentieth century as well. Thus,

Chicago was the site of widely varied musical activity, in which classical music and in particular opera played only a small part.

Music Criticism in American Newspapers

As American cities became established and performances of classical music grew more frequent, journalists increasingly included coverage of musical events in the newspapers. Mark

Grant and Mark McKnight each have written on this history.32 In his book Maestros of the Pen:

A History of Classical Music Criticism in America, Grant writes that the first music-related information in U.S. newspapers in the eighteenth century took the form of announcements of concerts in short newspaper items called squibs, which often included information about who among the elite attended these events.33 Sometimes a subscriber would write about a concert for the paper, and in these cases Grant notes that they often wrote “in terms florid, ethereal, and meaningless” because the slow-moving papers of the day were more focused on entertaining

30 Vaillant, 2-3. 31 Absher, 1. 32 Mark McKnight, “Music Criticism in the United States and Canada up to the Second World War,” in The Cambridge History of Music Criticism, ed. Christopher Dingle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 293-316. 33 Mark Grant, Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 4. 13 language than timely reports, but sometimes they wrote more “intelligent criticism.”34 Americans had varied motives for concert-going: in early-nineteenth-century New York, for example, people attended concerts primarily for social purposes and sometimes had little knowledge about the music. Accordingly, newspaper reporters in that city especially emphasized the presence of fashionable members of society at concerts, a choice which Grant speculates was made “to conceal their own lack of musical education or critical discernment.”35

Over the course of the nineteenth century, newspapers evolved in their format and readership. Before 1830, Grant writes, U.S. newspapers were mainly written for and affordable to the upper class, and these papers are now categorized as either “political” (containing editorials supporting a particular party’s views) or “mercantile” (containing financial news and advertisements).36 Some newspapers gradually varied their content, bridging these two types, and eventually added information about literature, drama, art, and music.37 These weekly or daily papers had been primarily sold by subscription, but when the New-York Sun began selling single daily papers in 1833, other publications followed and began printing penny papers that were affordable to the working class. These papers led journalists towards sensationalism in their writing, as that was what sold single issues of a paper. Music was often represented in an

“Amusements” column in these papers, which listed upcoming events and how to get tickets, but actual music reviews were not yet common.38

34 Grant, 5. 35 Grant, 7-8. Indeed, the possibility that critics had a limited understanding of the technicalities of Western art music is something to consider when examining criticism in Chicago at any point during the nineteenth century, as music critics like Upton could become successful without having formal musical training during that period. In such cases, a lack of technical facility or experience with Western art music may be one reason critics in the Tribune from 1860 to 1876 continued to write a good deal about audiences, theatrical elements of opera performances, and elements of opera stars’ personal lives instead of focusing only on musical matters (although they sometimes did use technical terms to describe qualities of singers’ voices and their execution of particular opera numbers). 36 Grant, 9-10. 37 Grant, 10. 38 Grant, 12-13. 14

In the 1840s and 1850s, papers began publishing music criticism in earnest. Grant identifies two enduring types of music criticism that crystallized by midcentury:

One was that of the impressionistic poet-rhapsodist, attempting through language to evoke for his readers something of the emotional quality of the sounds without resorting to vague gaseous expatiations. The other was that of the technical analyst: at his best patiently indoctrinating the untutored reader in the vast craft and lore of the art; at his worst engaging in pettifogging displays of pedantic one-upmanship.39

Grant notes that these early critics varied widely in their opinions of composers in the classical tradition, as the Western art music canon as we know it had not yet been established. Their main goal was similar, however: by the end of the 1840s, the group of New York critics had “a missionary sense of its duty as a courier of the arts to the great unwashed.”40 John Sullivan

Dwight (1813-1893) was an especially influential nineteenth-century music critic who, informed by his early work as a minister and involvement with transcendentalist thinkers, advocated for the uplifting powers of classical music for the general public.41

The later decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century were, as Grant puts it, “years of unprecedented commitment of private wealth toward the public arts in this country.”42 Accordingly, music criticism was given more space in the papers and music critics became well-known voices in journalism. Grant calls these critics the “Old Guard” because they began in the mid to late nineteenth century and kept writing through decades of tremendous cultural and technological change. This group includes W.F. Apthorp (1848-1913),

Louis Elson (1848-1920), Philip Hale (1854-1934), and Henry T. Parker (1867-1934) in Boston;

Henry Krehbiel (1854-1923), Henry T. Finck (1854-1926), W.J. Henderson (1855-1937), James

39 Grant, 25. 40 Grant, 26-27 41 Grant, 39-57. 42 Grant, 58. 15

Gibbons Huneker (1857-1921), and Richard Aldrich (1863-1937) in New York; and W.S.B.

Mathews (1837-1912) and George P. Upton in Chicago.43

When he joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, Upton became part of the life of what would later be one of the city’s most influential newspapers. The history of this publication, founded by abolitionists Joseph Medill and Charles Ray in 1847, has been well documented.44

The paper changed names several times: it was the Chicago Daily Tribune from 1847 to 1858, the Chicago Press and Tribune from 1858 to 1860, the Chicago Tribune from 1860 to 1872, and the Chicago Daily Tribune again from 1872 to 1922. I use the generic title Chicago Tribune to refer to the publication in its various guises from 1860 through 1876.

Literature on Topics in Nineteenth-Century Music

As Grant notes, the latter half of the nineteenth century saw a flourishing of the arts in the

United States, partly due to increased patronage by individuals. Abundant scholarship exists on

American music during this period, and historians vary widely in their responses to questions such as which genres should be discussed, which musicians quality as “American,” and the amount of attention to allot to different members of the music-making process (composers, performers, audiences, publishers, institutions, managers, critics, and the list goes on). While my study is located at the intersection of topics such as music criticism, opera, prima donnas, women

43 Grant, 58-104. 44 Lloyd Wendt, Chicago Tribune: The Rise of a Great American Newspaper (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1979). Wendt’s monograph is not only an interesting history of the publication itself, but also a fascinating source of information on the civic and cultural life of Chicago since the mid-nineteenth century. See also Wayne Klatt, Chicago Journalism: A History (Jefferson, NC.: McFarland & Company, 2009); and Richard Junger, Becoming the Second City: Chicago’s Mass News Media, 1833-1898 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). 16 in music, and the Midwest, it is informed by scholarship on the wider environment of music- making that occurred in other genres and other parts of the country during this time period.45

One author whose methodology particularly influenced the course of my study is Joseph

Horowitz, who has studied classical music in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from a cultural history approach. In his 2005 book Classical Music in

America: A History of its Rise and Fall, Horowitz chronicles classical music from the 1860s through the year 2000 with the foundational premise that American musicians “regrew” music from Europe rather than truly developing a native classical music culture; I found this notion to be a common sentiment in the journalism I read from the 1860s and 1870s.46 Horowitz draws from the lives of people representing many different occupations in this book: music critics, producers, founders and organizers of musical institutions, performers, conductors, composers, patrons, and more, including people from Europe who spent significant time in the U.S. as well as people from the United States. Another of Horowitz’s works on music of this period is his

1994 book Wagner Nights, which chronicles Wagner’s rise to popularity in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.47 Additionally, in 2012 Horowitz published Moral Fire:

Musical Portraits from America’s Fin de Siècle, in which he traces the lives of four influential individuals who exemplify the strong sense of morality that undergirded American society in the

45 A few sources that informed my study include: Adrienne Fried Block, assisted by Nancy Stewart, “Women in American Music, 1800-1918,” in Women & Music: A History, ed. Karin Pendle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 193-226; Richard Crawford, America’s Musical Life: A History (New York: Norton, 2001) and The American Musical Landscape: The Business of Musicianship from Billings to Gershwin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); James Heintze, editor, American Musical Life in Context and Practice to 1865 (New York: Routledge, 1993); Michael Saffle, editor, Music and Culture in America, 1861-1918 (New York: Garland, 1998); John Spitzer, editor, American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); and Judith Tick, editor, and Paul Beaudoin, assistant editor, Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 46 Joseph Horowitz, Classical Music in America: A History of its Rise and Fall (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005). Horowitz goes on to argue that this “irredeemably Eurocentric” music culture declined in vitality to be largely replaced by popular genres at the end of the twentieth century. 47 Joseph Horowitz, Wagner Nights: An American History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 17

1890s (a period he considers the peak decade for classical music in this country).48 Horowitz’s writing is rich in interdisciplinary connections and intellectual history, providing a picture of the ideologies and networks that underlay American music-making in the late nineteenth century.

His method of using the histories of a few individuals to draw out foundational cultural ideas was influential in my choice to organize my project around case studies of two opera stars.

The strong desire for moral uplift among nineteenth-century Americans which Horowitz describes was one reason for their promotion of classical music. Ralph Locke writes on the quasi-religious attitudes towards classical music in nineteenth-century America in his 1993 article “Music Lovers, Patrons, and the ‘Sacralization’ of Culture in America” in 19th-Century

Music.49 Classical music was increasingly seen as a high culture,50 existing not for entertainment but for the edification of individuals and society.51 These ideals were some of the driving forces behind increased patronage of classical music by wealthy individuals; many of these patrons were women, and their support of classical music through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries was instrumental.52

In the operatic realm, John Dizikes has written a cultural history of opera in the United

States that covers all types of opera, serious and comic, from large cities through small towns. I was particularly inspired by the way Dizikes incorporates financial information on topics like the affordability of ticket prices or the wages and cost of living for performers and impresarios into

48 Joseph Horowitz, Moral Fire: Musical Portraits from America’s Fin de Siècle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 49 Ralph Locke, “Music Lovers, Patrons, and the ‘Sacralization’ of Culture in America,” 19th-Century Music 17, no. 2 (Autumn 1993): 149-173. 50 On the concept of high and low cultures, see Lawrence Levine, Highbrow, Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). 51 See J. Peter Burkholder, “Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream in Music of the Last Hundred Years,” The Journal of Musicology 2, no. 2 (Spring 1983): 115-134. 52 See Ralph P. Locke and Cyrilla Barr, eds., Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists Since 1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 18 his history; similar types of financial considerations were often mentioned in the Chicago

Tribune’s coverage of opera during the 1860s and 1870s. Additionally, Dizikes writes specifically on opera in Chicago from the early 1880s through the turn of the century, discussing

Wagner’s reception in that city, the effort to build the Auditorium theater, and the influences of

Walt Whitman’s and Wagner’s aesthetics on the architects of that theater.53

Another scholar whose work has influenced my study of opera stars is Katherine Preston, who has written two books on opera in nineteenth-century America. In the first, published in

1993, Preston writes on traveling opera troupes in the antebellum period—when, as she puts it,

“Opera, as musical theater, was a normal part of the American theatrical repertory of the time,” and famous opera tunes were cultural touchstones with widespread recognition.54 Preston’s second book is on the popularity of continental operas translated into English in late-nineteenth- century America, with particular focus on the many opera companies managed by women

(including Clara Louise Kellogg’s English Opera Company).55

Several scholars have focused on the lives and careers of nineteenth-century prima donnas.56 In The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century, a 2012 collection edited by Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss, a number of scholars contribute essays on opera stars from that period in the United States and Europe.57 Within that collection, I especially reference Poriss’ essay on how coverage of prima donnas’ philanthropy in newspapers and biographies shaped their public images. Another source I reference is Kristin Turner’s 2014

53 John Dizikes, Opera in America: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 247-251. 54 Katherine Preston, Opera on the Road: Traveling Opera Troupes in the United States, 1825-60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), xii. 55 Katherine Preston, Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 56 See Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815-1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 57 Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss, eds., The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); see also Hilary Poriss, “Divas and Divos,” in The Oxford Handbook of Opera, ed. Helen M. Greenwald (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 373-394. 19 article for the Journal of the Society of American Music on the Austrian-American soprano

Emma Juch’s career singing opera translated into English and managing her own company.

Turner explores the social expectations of a woman in Juch’s position as well as how Juch marketed her company’s performances to audiences from different socioeconomic groups.58

The above scholarship provides a broader and more varied picture of music-making in the United States during the late nineteenth century than is possible to discuss within the scope of my study. The pages of the Chicago Tribune reflect the myriad musical activities that occurred in an American city in a given week; reviews of opera and news of its singers took up just a fraction of the paper’s “Amusements” columns, with other articles covering classical and popular genres as well as other arts such as literature and drama. In the chapters that follow, I narrow in my examination of the Tribune’s music criticism to focus on how George P. Upton and other critics wrote about two star singers, Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg. Journalism about these two prima donnas in the Chicago Tribune reveals some of the ways that nineteenth-century writers in a developing American city communicated ideas of musical genius, celebrity, nationality, and gender to the wider public, and, ultimately, communicated aspects of Chicago’s cultural history as well.

58 Kristin Turner, “‘A Joyous Star-Spangled Bannerism’: Emma Juch, Opera in English Translation, and the American Cultural Landscape in the Gilded Age,” Journal of the Society for American Music 8, no. 2 (May 2014): 219-252. 20

CHAPTER II. JOURNALISM ABOUT ADELINA PATTI IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

One of the most internationally acclaimed prima donnas during Upton’s initial decades in

Chicago was Adelina Patti (1843-1919). Adelina Juana Maria Patti was born in Madrid to a musical family who moved to New York when she was one year old. Her parents recognized her vocal potential early, and she gave concerts starting at the age of seven. Patti’s first Chicago appearance was in 1853 during a tour with pianist and impresario Maurice Strakosch (who was her brother-in-law, having married her sister Amalia) and the Norwegian violin virtuoso Ole

Bull.1 The child prodigy dazzled audiences in several performances during the 1850s, performed her first operatic role in New York as the lead in Lucia di Lammermoor in 1859, and after 1860 toured Europe and traveled internationally outside the United States for over 20 years. Patti finally returned to the United States in 1881 as a world-renowned soprano.2 Her sisters Amalia

Patti-Strakosch (1831-1915), who had a contralto voice, and Carlotta Patti (1840-1889), a soprano, were also active as opera singers during this time.

Because she spent a large portion of her career in Europe, Patti did not perform in

Chicago during the first two decades that George P. Upton worked at the Tribune. Thus, she is not listed in any of the concert programs or advertisements for operas in the Upton scrapbooks for the years 1860-1876. Upton’s account in his book Musical Memories corresponds with this timeline: he writes that he saw Patti perform in Chicago during the early 1850s,3 before he took a position at the Chicago Tribune, and that she returned in the 1880s for several successful opera performances.4 Patti’s physical absence during Upton’s first years at the Tribune did not stop the

1 Upton, George P. Musical Memories: My Recollections of Celebrities of the Half Century 1850-1900. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1908. See also an anonymous review under “The First Grand Concert,” Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1853, ProQuest. 2 Elizabeth Forbes, “Patti family,” in Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. https://doi- org.ezproxy.bgsu.edu/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.21091. 3 Upton, Musical Memories, 37. 4 Upton, Musical Memories, 40. 21 critic and his paper from publishing information about her during this time, however. Through

Upton’s own articles or correspondence from points across North America and Europe, the

Tribune provided their musical readers with news of the most famous opera stars’ international comings and goings, the reception of their performances, and other interesting tidbits from their lives. Because Patti was recognized as one of the top talents of her day, there is significant coverage of her in the Tribune during the time period under consideration, and she is thus the central figure of my first case study that examines the ways in which Upton and related critics wrote about prima donnas for readers who followed musical news.

I will consider journalism in the Tribune about Adelina Patti during this period by grouping articles related to her into five thematic areas: Patti’s voice and performance abilities, her appearance, her personal life, her character, and her finances. These areas reflect some of the topics that came up fairly often or were given significant space in the newspaper during this time period, but are not a comprehensive study of everything the Tribune published about Patti. As I mention reviews, announcements, musical columns, and other articles published in the Tribune during Upton’s tenure as their sole music critic, I postulate that they were written by Upton himself unless otherwise stated. Some of the articles are indeed signed with Upton’s literary pseudonym, Peregrine Pickle. Other articles or portions of articles are attributed to correspondents or publications in other cities. Some are of unattributed authorship, so there is room for error in my assumption that Upton is primarily responsible for them. Overall, these primary sources from newspapers provide information on what Upton and other journalists thought the public would like to read and the manner in which they presented Patti as prima donna to the public. Critics cast Patti as a celebrity whose every move was watched by the press 22 and the public; she was not only subjected to criticism for her onstage performances, but also for her offstage actions, which in the hands of the press became performances of her public persona.

Patti’s Voice and Performing Abilities

The first thematic area I examine focuses on how Upton and other Tribune journalists write about Adelina Patti’s voice and performance abilities. By 1860, her vocal talents were widely acknowledged in the realm of classical music. Over the ensuing decades, journalists would occasionally offer their thoughts on changes to the prima donna’s voice or her career’s trajectory over time. Considering the nature of these remarks about Patti’s musicianship can provide insight into the ways people thought and spoke about prima donnas during her time, as well as the ways that people kept track of the careers of musicians who started out as child prodigies or were considered to possess musical genius.

Some articles from the 1860s and 1870s are straightforward reports of Patti’s success in major European cities with few specific comments on her vocal qualities. For instance, on July

17, 1863, an unattributed article (likely written by Upton) reads:

That portion of foreign musical intelligence which comes from London is spoken in one word—Patti. Adelina has “fairly astonished even the most devoted believers in her genius.” Her sister, Carlotta, who was singing in concert at the same time, was scarcely less successful. Of other singers there are many, but none of them divide the popular favor but for a moment.5

This report indicates that Patti’s reception in London at this early point in her international career was overwhelmingly positive. Praise for Adelina Patti is also found where journalists reference her as one of the musical world’s leading sopranos, or as a gold standard against which other artists can be compared. One such article is an unattributed piece from December 11, 1870 about

Christina Nilsson’s planned appearance in Chicago, probably written by Upton. In this article,

5 “Foreign Musical News,” Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1863, ProQuest. 23

Nilsson is described as “one of the few artists—among them Patti, Viardot-Garcia, Lucca, and

Tietjens—who enjoy a world-wide reputation.”6 The author of this article also describes a rivalry between Nilsson and Patti with a nationalist tint, writing that Nilsson’s

movements in the musical firmament, in which she is one of the brightest stars, have always been watched with special interest—an interest which has, perhaps, been enhanced by the fact that she has always contested the palm on the operatic stage with our own prima donna, Adelina Patti.7

It appears that this journalist claimed Patti as fully American because of her upbringing and initial success in this country, notwithstanding her Spanish birthplace, her parents’ Italian nationality,8 and her ten-year absence from the United States at the time the article was written.

Because she was one of their own, a rivalry between Patti and the Swedish star Nilsson would capture the American musical public’s attention. The fact that Nilsson and Patti are described as rivals standing on equal footing means that Patti, too, must have merited the imaginative designation of “one of the brightest stars” in “the musical firmament.”9

Many reviews of Patti’s European performances in the Tribune contained more specific praise of her vocal and theatrical qualities, and some mix varying amounts of praise and criticism. A common topic of journalists’ consideration during the 1860s and 1870s was how

Patti’s voice and acting skills would stand the test of time as she aged from a child prodigy into a mature singer in her twenties and thirties. One example of such writing is a July 21, 1863 article, published just a few years after Patti’s 1859 operatic debut in New York, in which a London correspondent to the New York Evening Post acknowledges Patti’s increasing age while still complimenting her artistry. It reads:

6 “Nilsson,” Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1870, ProQuest. 7 “Nilsson,” Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1870, ProQuest. 8 Forbes, “Patti family,” in Grove Music Online. 9 “Nilsson,” Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1870, ProQuest. 24

At the Covent Garden Adelina Patti is the leading star. She has somewhat changed from that eventful off night when she first appeared at the New York Academy of Music. Her voice is fuller and more powerful, but has lost a little of its charming childish freshness, while in acting she has vastly improved. … Her latest success has been in Ninetta in ‘Gazza Ladra;’ but her Zerlina, Amini [sic] and Leonora are considered as better performances, the best critics awarding the palm of all to her Rosina.10

Here the critic describes growing up as a sort of trade-off for Patti, as she loses the “childish freshness” of her voice but she gains vocal fullness and power as well as acting abilities. The critic also opines on which roles from her repertoire Patti performed best, showing that by the age of twenty she had already been in many major productions. Based on this article and others mentioning singers’ repertoires, it is interesting to note that music critics assumed their readers would be familiar with the names of characters in commonly-performed operas. Additionally, the journalistic convention to italicize the names of characters and use quotation marks for the titles of works indicates a system that further identifies the singer with the role.

If this London correspondent had faith in Patti’s continuing vocal powers, other journalists were more doubtful. A review from a Tribune correspondent in Florence, Italy using the pseudonym “Spero” was published on January 6, 1866, with the remarks:

Adelina Patti, who has made a reputation outside of Italy, is now trying to make one at home. I doubt whether she will be very successful. An artist who comes to us with habits acquired among colder people, is likely to lack the warmth and passion essential to success here.11

As in the above-mentioned article that portrayed Patti as Nilsson’s American rival, this critic also taps into the nationalistic language surrounding prima donnas. Here, the correspondent expresses skepticism that Patti can produce the “passion” required by the Italian opera environment, despite her success in other countries. This comment reflects the long-lasting tradition of Italy, the birthplace of opera, being a proving ground for singers. It is also interesting that the critic

10 “The Opera and Adelina Patti,” Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1863, ProQuest. 11 Spero, “From Italy,” Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1866, ProQuest. 25 uses the word “home” to describe Patti’s relationship to Italy; this is likely because Adelina

Patti’s parents, Salvatore Patti and Caterina Chiesa Barilli-Patti, were Italian and both spent the majority of their careers as singers in that country.12 Thus, even if this Florentine correspondent views Adelina Patti as a person of Italian nationality, her success in that country is not guaranteed because she learned her craft in stereotypically “colder” foreign environments.

Another journalist to doubt Patti’s abilities was the Paris correspondent for the Tribune, who critiqued her in a review published on May 19, 1867 as follows:

Adelina Patti sang last Sunday, for the last time, in the ‘Barbiere.’ I heard her in the opera, but could discover no improvement in her singing since her performances in America. Her acting, however, is charming. It may seem sacriligious [sic] to you, but I find her voice rather fatigued, and not equal in all the registers.13

Here, again, the critic acknowledges Patti’s fine acting abilities. However, the critic finds her singing unimproved and even comments that her voice seems fatigued, suggesting that her busy operatic career may be taking its toll. Still, all of this is padded by a disclaimer for the readers that it may seem sacrilegious to make such comments about a figure like Patti, a diva who was evidently worshiped by many among the musical readership.

Despite these critics’ public worries in the 1860s, Patti went on to have an overwhelmingly successful career in Europe in the following decades, so much so that she did not return to the United States until the early 1880s. Critics in the 1870s generally described audiences as enthusiastically receptive to Patti’s performances in major European cities. One substantive account comes from the Tribune’s correspondent “Gyula” in Vienna, published on

May 6, 1872:

Vienna is just now in ecstatic bliss over the artistic singing and acting of Adelina Patti. If ovations at the Wiener Theatre, where Mozart first led his ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Magic Flute,’ do not quite rival those received by her at St. Petersburg or Moscow, they are still great

12 Forbes, “Patti family,” in Grove Music Online. 13 “Musical Items,” Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1867, ProQuest. 26

enough to spoil any prima donna but Adelina.… No Lucia or Gilda in ‘Rigoletto,’ ever had such a truthful and lifelike exponent as in the Diva. She stands now at the zenith of artistic perfection. Her still youthful appearance, coupled with the dramatic power which a long experience on the stage has imparted her, makes her, aside from her great vocal talent, the foremost of lyric artists of the day. Indeed, there has been nothing like her since the days of Malibran. The price of admission is very high,—60 florins a box, and 10 florins for a seat; but when you hear her, you at once feel that your money has been worthily invested. What a rich harvest awaits her in the United States!14

There are many points of interest in this correspondent’s glowing review. In an article of such overall warmth and praise, it is interesting that the writer introduces a hint of coolness by saying that Patti’s applause in Vienna was less than what she received in Russia. Nonetheless, the writer seems to put Patti on a level of her own, able to graciously receive hearty applause and keep her character intact, whereas other prima donnas would be spoiled by such rich praise. (Indeed, this journalist goes on to describe Patti’s naturally modest and unspoiled personality, the likes of which comments I will discuss in further detail below.) It is also noteworthy to see how this journalist identifies qualities that place Patti at the height of her artistry: among these desirable qualities are her appearance (another topic which I will explore below), her dramatic abilities that have grown with experience, and of course her vocal talent. The reviewer then describes her as a worthy successor in the line of mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran (1808-1836), one of the most celebrated divas of the nineteenth century.15 Finally, the writer expresses the belief that the high prices to hear Patti are justified, and offers a point of connection with American readers by imagining Patti’s positive reception should she return to this country—and, in context, the word

“harvest” can also subtly or overtly allude to her prospective financial profits in the United

States.

14 Gyula, “Vienna,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1872, ProQuest. 15 Elizabeth Forbes, “Malibran [née García], Maria(-Felicia),” in Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2009. https://doi-org.ezproxy.bgsu.edu/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.17547. 27

Other journalism in the Tribune about Patti’s voice from the early 1870s conveys similar sentiments: critics mostly praise her abilities but give the occasional critique. In the music column on April 27, 1873, the reporter (possibly Upton) provided only this solitary witticism as news about the prima donna: “Adelina Patti’s voice is in such splendid condition that it is believed she can not come to America for several years.”16 And in an unattributed article of

January 25, 1874, a date when Patti had been discussed in an interview printed elsewhere in the paper, the writer states:

As it is doubtful, however, whether Adelina Patti will come to this country until she has squeezed the European orange dry, and time has begun to put an edge on her voice, opera-goers will not have to worry themselves about the Patti prices.17

This vivid description of Patti taking full advantage of European markets borders on portraying her as greedy and exacting, a common trope about prima donnas that I will consider in more detail below. The critic also expresses the idea, echoed in other articles mentioned above, that the passage of time has resulted (or will result) in strain on Patti’s voice, and she may not return to the United States while she is still in her prime. Today it is impossible to know exactly what Patti sounded like at these early stages in her career, although, remarkably, some recordings do exist of her singing from the first decades of the twentieth century.18 Reading this critique from a contemporary perspective, though, it is clear from Patti’s continuing career in the ensuing decades that whatever this “edge” on her voice might be (real or imagined), it did not stop her from succeeding in the U.S. and internationally during the 1880s and beyond. Her career was

16 “Music,” Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1873, ProQuest. 17 “Operatic Finances,” Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1874, ProQuest. As was the custom with correspondents, these articles from January 25 were reprinted in Dwight’s Journal of Music on Saturday, February 7, 1874. See “The Opera in Chicago,” Dwight’s Journal of Music XXXIII, no. 22 (February 7, 1874): 176. 18 Adelina Patti, soprano, Alfredo Barilli, pianist, and Landon Ronald, pianist, Spotify, tracks 6, 19, 20, 24, 35, and 36 on The Era of Adelina Patti, recorded 1905-06, Nimbus Records NI 7840/41, originally released in 1993. The pianist Alfredo Barilli (or Barili) was Patti’s nephew: for more information about his career in Italy and the United States, see N. Lee Orr, “Alfredo Barili (1854-1935),” New Georgia Encyclopedia, Georgia Humanities, June 4, 2018, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/alfredo-barili-1854-1935. 28 still marked by overall success, as the Boston Post’s London correspondent described in a July 9,

1876 article: “Patti has lost none of her great popularity, and sings as beautifully as ever.”19

Her Appearance

Besides the onstage matters of her voice and acting, Upton and other journalists for the

Tribune often wrote about the largely offstage matters of Patti’s personality, appearance, and social life. Their readers’ apparent interest in these topics fits into a larger trend of the development of celebrity culture during the nineteenth century. Lawrence Kramer identifies this trend in his 2016 book chapter on the connections between Franz Liszt’s virtuosic appeal and the fascination with reading novels in early nineteenth-century Europe, writing that during this period,

[there was] a growing attraction to sources of charismatic authority that enter the public sphere in order to transform the character of private life. The figures who wielded that authority were less often political leaders… than they were artists, performers, entertainers, authors—the masters and inventors of feeling and harbingers of the mass culture of the century to follow.20

While Kramer focuses on Europe during Liszt’s day, public interest in “charismatic” personalities was also on the rise in the United States as the nineteenth century progressed.

Managers and journalists in this country crafted aggressive marketing efforts and vividly worded newspaper articles in order to tap into and sustain audiences’ enchantment with musical celebrities. Prima donnas were especially captivating figures; as Kristen M. Turner writes in an article about soprano Emma Juch (1861-1939), “Female singers during the late nineteenth century were not only the most important symbol of operatic vocal beauty, but also celebrities

19 “Abroad,” Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1876, ProQuest. 20 Lawrence Kramer, “Virtuosity, Reading, Authorship,” in The Thought of Music (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 117. 29 whose actions were scrutinized and gossiped about in a way very few male singers had to endure.”21

Coverage of Adelina Patti in the Tribune therefore supplies readers with plenty of content about her personal life, ranging across a wide variety of topics such as her appearance, activities, relationships, preferences, personality, and character. For the readers interested in Patti’s looks and fashion choices, a couple of Tribune articles include detailed descriptions of her wardrobe.

In many ways the comments about Patti’s clothing and appearance in these articles parallel similar descriptions of ensembles worn by dignitaries, aristocrats, and other well-known people—typically women, although men’s appearances are sometimes described—at important events throughout the 1860s and 1870s. In music criticism specifically, it was common for nineteenth-century critics (almost all of whom were men) to include comments about female musicians’ appearances in their writing, as Laura Hamer notes in a chapter about music criticism of women.22 Whether she was performing or away from the opera house, the prima donna was still under the media’s watchful gaze.

Two examples of journalism about Patti’s appearance in this vein can be found in the

Chicago Tribune from the years 1860-1876. The first is by George P. Upton; using his pseudonym Peregrine Pickle, he wrote on February 10, 1867:

Before I get through with the fashions it will be in order to state that la diva Patti has created a profound sensation in Paris by the introduction of a new costume for Rosina in the Barber of Seville. It is a short blue silk reps [sic] trimmed with round, garnet-colored chenille balls, silver cord and velvet.23

21 Kristin Turner, “‘A Joyous Star-Spangled Bannerism’: Emma Juch, Opera in English Translation, and the American Cultural Landscape in the Gilded Age,” Journal of the Society for American Music 8, no. 2 (May 2014): 223. 22 Laura Hamer, “The Gender Paradox: Criticism of Women and Women as Critics,” in The Cambridge History of Music Criticism, edited by Christopher Dingle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 272-90. 23 Peregrine Pickle, “The World of Amusement,” Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1867, ProQuest. 30

As photographs were not yet printed in daily publications like the Chicago Tribune, written descriptions like the one above conveyed details of Patti’s wardrobe to interested fans. It seems that Patti was at least partially responsible for choosing her own costume; journalism about

Kellogg included similar remarks indicating that singers made some costuming choices. Many photographs of Patti from sources other than newspapers do still exist, showing her both as herself and in costume for various operatic roles. Several of these images can be found in

Appendix A of this study, including one photograph of Patti in costume as Rosina that may or may not match the description above (see Figure 2 in Appendix A).

A second and particularly extensive description of Patti’s dress and appearance is found in an article printed in the Tribune on July 9, 1876 in which a correspondent of the Boston Post in London recalls seeing Patti among the audience at Covent Garden. The correspondent begins,

Patti has lost none of her great popularity, and sings as beautifully as ever. I was at Covent Garden the other night, and saw her looking unutterably pretty. Anything more artistic and graceful than the picture she made that night I have rarely seen. Her box was on the ground tier, and I was close to her, and could feast my eyes at leisure.24

The writer then goes on to detail the particulars of Patti’s white dress, gloves, and diamond hair ornaments in a passage spanning 179 words. Towards the end of this lengthy segment, the journalist makes the overall assessment that the outfit showed good taste and propriety, indicating that “Patti looked excessively well in this simple costume—for it was simple, and, with the exception of the diamond clasps in her hair, was not beyond the reach of the most moderate income.”25 With such a comment, it seems that the journalist is trying to portray Patti as reasonable and not overly showy in her way of dress, despite all the previous discussion of her finery. These types of comments about the perceived modesty or vanity of prima donnas were

24 “Abroad,” Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1876, ProQuest. 25 “Abroad,” Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1876, ProQuest. 31 quite common, as I will discuss in more depth below. Additionally, the comment about incomes also implies that readers could easily emulate the look if they so desired, and it is clear from journalism about Clara Louise Kellogg that prima donnas were indeed referenced as fashion role models. Finally, the writer closes by saying that many eyes were on Patti that evening, and she was watched even more intently than were audience members of high social and political standing:

It was amusing to me to watch the sensation she created among the audience. The Duke of Connaught, the Princess Beatrice, and the Princess Charlotte of Prussia were in the royal box, but they were eclipsed in point of interest by Mme. Patti. All the opera-glasses were leveled at her.26

The mention of opera-glasses at the end of this section is telling. The opera was a place for prima donnas to see and be seen. Critics and the audience had a voyeuristic attitude, as they were just as interested in watching Patti in the audience as they were in watching the stage.

Her Personal Life

Another area of interest regarding a celebrity like Patti was gossip about her romantic and familial relationships. Rumors about personal relationships of prima donnas—and especially alleged scandals—circulated quickly. It is appropriate here to note Kristen M. Turner’s warning that in reading nineteenth-century newspapers,

[E]verything in print must be scrutinized carefully, since much of what was reported in the media was intended to sell the prima donna (and newspapers) to the public. Factual accuracy was often a casualty of such an approach…. The challenge in biographical research… is to look behind the published stories and read between the lines.27

If they do not necessarily provide accurate information, these papers do tell us what sort of news was estimated to be interesting to the public and what type of language was used about prima donnas.

26 “Abroad,” Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1876, ProQuest. 27 Turner, 223. 32

This tendency of journalists to prioritize sensation over accuracy is evident in the

Tribune’s summer 1863 coverage of a tale that turned out to be fabricated: the story suggested that Patti, then twenty years old, planned to marry a suitor against her family’s wishes and demanded more control over her earnings. The first rumors were printed in the Chicago Tribune on June 9, 1863, appearing in a long article of unacknowledged authorship in the “Personal” column. It reads:

Adelina Patti is in trouble. The Paris correspondent of the New York Courier des Etats Unis, writing under date of May 23d [sic], says that a musical journal of Paris has received from London… a note, in English, written and signed by Adelina Patti, wherein she invokes the intervention of British justice against her family—to-wit: Patti, her father, and Strakosch, her brother-in-law. Adelina complains that she has seen every penny of her earnings, amounting to more than one hundred thousand dollars, swallowed up by the said Patti and Strakosch. This, however, is but a small matter, compared with another exercise of parental authority. She was sought in marriage by an honorable Spanish gentleman; her heart responded favorably, and Patti, the father, had once agreed to the arrangement… but the lady’s father refused to do as he had agreed…. Adelina now demands to be removed from under this tyranny, and to be placed in the tutelage of the Court of Chancery during the seven months remaining before she becomes of age. She declares… that she has no intention of seeking any pecuniary return from her father and brother-in-law, but that she freely abandons to them what they have so unceremoniously grabbed.28

My initial impression to this account was to notice the lack of autonomy afforded to women in financial and legal matters in the mid-nineteenth century. The alleged letter suggests Patti was not being treated well by her father and brother-in-law, who acted as her male guardians because of her youth and unmarried status.

This version of events, however, turned out to be false. On June 26, 1863, the Tribune published another long unattributed article with the informative title and subtitles: “The Adelina

Patti Imbroglio. ‘La Petite’ not a Ward in Chancery—Nor Engaged to be Married—Nor at Feud with her Father and Brother-in-Law—a Curious Affair.” The article begins with an

28 “Personal,” Chicago Tribune, June 9, 1863, ProQuest. 33 acknowledgement of the unfortunate mistake, in which the journalists had publicized wrong information “upon the authority of London papers.” The writer goes on to provide a correction with updated sources:

Several successive issues of the London Telegraph, received by the latest arrival, contain some most remarkable details of proceedings in this case, from which it is evident there has been some tall prevarication, and perhaps something even more criminal, on the part of somebody.29

What follows is a description of the “tall prevarication,” in which someone claiming to be Patti’s

“next friend, James William Macdonald,” sued her father and Maurice Strakosch on her behalf.

Further issues of the Telegraph revealed Patti’s complete denial of the rumors, as the journalist explains:

The very next number of the Telegraph contains a letter from the Solicitors of Messrs. Patti and Strakosch, and of Mlle. Patti, in which is embodied an affidavit of the latter, in which she utterly ignores the alleged bill in Chancery, declares she is wrongly named in it, that the use of her name in this proceeding has been without her sanction; and even without her knowledge, that she never before heard of the existence of Macdonald, her ‘next friend’ in this proceeding, that Maurice Strakosch is the husband of her eldest sister, and her professional instructor from the earliest period; and that there is not one word of truth in any of the affidavits… in this case.30

The writer goes on to report that Patti had “the utmost confidence” and “perfect satisfaction” in

“her father’s management of her affairs,” making her a model daughter by the standards of the time. A Belgian suitor by the name of Baron de Ville is said to have caused the scandal when he pursued Patti, believing she wanted to marry him:

[H]e determined to remove her from under the control of the family, and not wishing to appear in the technical relation of ‘next friend,’ he caused the said J. William Macdonald to act in that capacity.

After this clarification, there is some speculation by the journalist as to whether De Ville was not actually acting in Patti’s interests, based on further information printed in the Telegraph. Despite

29 “The Adelina Patti Imbroglio,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1863, ProQuest. 30 “The Adelina Patti Imbroglio,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1863, ProQuest. 34 this confusion, the writer concludes the article on a peaceful not: “As it is, we are led to believe that the prima donna is safely out of chancery, and that is cause enough for sincere congratulation.”31

The successful end of the scandal is confirmed in a later article from July 21, 1863, in which the London correspondent of the New York Evening Post states that,

[Patti] lives, as usual, with her brother-in-law, Maurice Strakosch, at Clapham, and all the stories about his alleged cruelty to her are mere moonshine. McDonald, the ‘next friend’ who manifested such extraordinary sympathy for her, is the clerk in the office of the lawyer who hoped to make something by the affair. Maurice Strakosch, the excitement having subsided, is once more happy….32

The matter was evidently settled in the singer’s favor and the rumors dispelled. Patti thus came out of the scandal with her reputation restored: she once again fulfilled contemporary expectations for a respectful woman and submissive daughter, being appropriately financially dependent on her male relatives.

When Patti actually did marry in 1868, articles published in the Tribune showed a slightly more cautious approach, as journalists evidently remembered the sticky situation of five years before. In a February 3, 1868 article, a writer from the London Daily News is quoted as follows:

Apropos of the dramatic world, the marriage of Adelina Patti has been announced again, and contradicted. The last rumored bridegroom was the Marquis de Caux, aide-de-camp to the Emperor, a nobleman of wealth and high lineage, who had possibly given a handle to the supposition by his assiduity at the Diva’s Sunday evening parties.33

This writer exhibits some skepticism by referencing previous rumors of Patti’s marriage before giving the name of her potential fiancé. And, surprisingly, the next bit of news to appear in the

Chicago Tribune came on February 12 from the Paris correspondent of the New York Herald,

31 “The Adelina Patti Imbroglio,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1863, ProQuest. 32 “The Opera and Adelina Patti,” Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1863, ProQuest. 33 “Fresh Foreign Items,” Chicago Tribune, February 3, 1868, ProQuest. 35 who wrote: “Mlle. Adelina Patti’s proposed union with the Marquis de Caux is irrevocably broken off.”34 By that summer, however, the marriage was announced as certain, and the financial contract between Patti (with her male financial representatives) and the Marquis was described in a July 22, 1868 article. I will discuss the financial aspects of this agreement in more detail below; for now, it is significant to note that the writer charges the Marquis with imprudent financial habits:

The Marquis de Caux asked to have the sum of 450,000 francs set aside for the payment of the mortgage on his estates, but on this point the Baron de Rothschild and Maurice Strakosch were inexorable, so that the property will have to be put up for sale, unless the creditors of the Marquis consent to wait for the chance repayment from Adelina’s future earnings, a contingency not very probable from the well known spendthrift habits of her future husband.35

This writer of this article also announces that the marriage ceremony will happen in August of that year. After Patti and the Marquis were married, further news reported trouble because of the

Marquis’ financial habits. From May 15, 1869, the “Personal” column contains the following report: “The Paris correspondent of the German and Belgian papers give rumors that Adelina

Patti is going to apply for a divorce from her husband, who, she has found out, is an inveterate gambler, and is spending money faster than she can make it.”36 Patti did not officially divorce the

Marquis until the 1880s. The constant coverage of her relational life was just one facet of the all- embracing media attention paid to this very famous prima donna.

Her Character

Beyond comments on Patti’s voice, descriptions of her appearance, and gossip about her relationships, articles in the Tribune also include journalists’ assessments of her persona and

34 “Parisian Gayeties,” Chicago Tribune, February 12, 1868, ProQuest. 35 “Patti’s Marriage Contract,” Chicago Tribune, July 22, 1868, ProQuest. The involvement of Baron de Rothschild is clarified below. 36 “Patti’s Marriage Contract,” Chicago Tribune, July 22, 1868, ProQuest. 36 character. A short remark from George P. Upton in the Tribune’s amusements column on March

27, 1870 reveals one way prima donnas were often described: under his pseudonym Peregrine

Pickle, Upton writes, “Mrs. Adelina Patti Caux has got the quinsy, showing that she is at least mortal.”37 This type of playful suggestion that Patti could be more than a mere mortal was similar to the language used by many critics and writers in the nineteenth century (and beyond) who imagined prima donnas as more-than-human because of their excessive talents and artistic sensitivities. Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss mention this tendency as they trace the etymology of the word “diva”: “‘Diva’ is still used in operatic discourse today, of course, in many instances to refer to someone who is or was not quite human—a magnificent creature able to transcend the mundane and in the process move those who listen to her through flights of rapture.”38 Similar language was used in the nineteenth century to describe instrumental virtuosos whose incredible talents seemed to place them outside of the realm of normal human abilities. James Deaville discusses this idea of excess in his chapter on aesthetic issues surrounding virtuosity,39 and in a separate book chapter about Czerny and Liszt he also mentions that some of early nineteenth- century critics of virtuosos considered them inhuman to the point of being unnatural and deceptive.40 Related critiques were sometimes leveled at prima donnas when listeners recognized their dazzling vocal techniques but felt there was no soul or expression behind their voices, making them seem inhuman and otherworldly.

Yet, as Upton’s 1870 comment indicates, sickness and other less-than-ideal circumstances reminded writers and audiences that prima donnas like Patti were indeed human.

37 Peregrine Pickle, “The World of Amusement,” Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1870, ProQuest. 38 Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss, eds., introduction to The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), xxxiii. 39 James Deaville, “Virtuosity and the Virtuoso,” in Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives, ed. Stephen Downes (New York: Routledge, 2014), 290. 40 James Deaville, “A Star is Born? Czerny, Liszt, and the Pedagogy of Virtuosity,” in Beyond the Art of Finger Dexterity: Reassessing Carl Czerny, ed. David Gramit (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 53-55. 37

Sometimes critics emphasized singers’ musical or even personal flaws, as critics are wont to do, and certain stereotypes existed around the negative qualities ascribed to prima donnas. As they probe possible meanings of the word “diva,” for example, Cowgill and Poriss note that this label can be used in some contexts to describe a person as “spoiled, whimsical, selfish, egotistical, and even sadistic,” recalling the behavior of opera stars who have used their power and fame to make what are perceived as “unreasonable demands on those surrounding them.”41 Additionally, prima donnas were sometimes viewed with distrust because they broke with societal expectations around femininity by earning money as performers. Kristen M. Turner explains this transgression of norms when she considers soprano Emma Juch:

During the nineteenth century, social norms dictated that women should remain protected in the private sphere where they were expected to oversee the home, raise their children, and provide an impeccable moral example for their husbands.

Turner later continues:

Divas like Juch were firmly in the public sphere; she earned money and was required to be in close contact with men on stage and conduct business with them off stage. Such interactions jeopardized Juch’s moral superiority over men and cast doubt on her femininity, which, in turn, endangered her respectability.42

Not only were prima donnas at risk of being labeled difficult or selfish, but they also were watched closely in their relationships with men and could be denigrated for conduct that did not meet society’s expectations for feminine morality and domesticity. Roger Freitas also explores these pressures in his 2018 article on Patti, arguing that the singer presented herself in ways that would allow her to avoid the “taint” of negative stereotypes towards performing women while crafting a public image of idealized femininity.43

41 Cowgill and Poriss, xxxiii. 42 Turner, 223. 43 Roger Freitas, “Singing Herself: Adelina Patti and the Performance of Femininity,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 71, no. 2 (2018): 287–369. 38

These ways of writing about prima donnas coalesce into two contrasting stereotypes, as described by Hilary Poriss: the prima donna often tended to be seen as an angelic, beneficent artist or alternately as a greedy, self-absorbed celebrity.44 Poriss argues that journalists and authors intentionally promoted narratives about prima donnas’ philanthropic actions to provide

“an important counterpoint to standard received notions about these women” that portrayed them as “capricious,” “egotistical,” and “inherently selfish.”45 Poriss also notes that the vivid language typical in nineteenth-century newspapers and the difficulty of determining the truth of what was printed made it easy for writers to exaggerate stories of prima donnas’ actions.46 Journalists could easily embellish or fabricate stories about women to cast them in a positive or negative light, but if we look deeper, as Poriss writes, we begin to see how the types of stories that were published reveal the cultural work which their writers intended them to carry out, or the ways writers sought to influence public opinion through them.47 Jenny Lind was a prime example of a prima donna whose charitable deeds were publicized extensively by the press and contributed to her spotless reputation; before her such accounts were also printed about Maria Malibran and others. Poriss traces the beginning of this phenomenon to the eighteenth century, when European musicians began to have some financial independence from patrons, though she notes that

“narratives concerning the charitable deeds of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century singers were the exception” and such accounts only became common in the nineteenth century.48

Journalism about Adelina Patti’s character in the Chicago Tribune often slanted towards one or the other of these prima donna stereotypes. Some articles contain remarks about Patti’s

44 Hilary Poriss, “Prima Donnas and the Performance of Altruism,” in The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Rachel Gowgill and Hilary Poriss (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 43. 45 Poriss, 43. 46 Poriss, 44. 47 Poriss, 44. 48 Poriss, 42-45. 39 modesty, giving her a humble and angelic aura. In an article published on May 6, 1872, for example, the Tribune’s Vienna correspondent writes that despite the impression that Patti’s

“ovations” from Vienna audiences were slightly smaller than those from Russian audiences,

[T]hey are still great enough to spoil any prima donna but Adelina. Although appreciative of the favors which an admiring public accords her, she never for a moment steps over the limits of her natural simplicity and modesty. Patti is, off the stage, what she is on the stage,—an unassuming and to-nature-faithful artist.49

This critic elevates Patti above any other prima donna and emphasizes her modesty and propriety of character. The writer also presents the idea that Patti remains the same person on and off the stage, which suggests a type of authenticity and trustworthiness to audiences who are not able to personally know what she is like after the curtain falls. Patti is also lauded for being “to-nature- faithful,” in a somewhat ambiguous turn of phrase that nevertheless casts away any accusations of artifice, which were often leveled against divas and virtuosos. Perhaps the journalist uses this remark to indicate that Patti does not manipulate the music excessively to show off her own talents but sticks faithfully to the score, or that she crafts realistic and humanizing portrayals of the characters she plays. Either way, faithfulness to nature was an enduring artistic ideal of the period, and it complements the critic’s description of Patti as an unassuming and authentic artist.

On the other hand, in a January 25, 1874 interview between impresario Max Strakosch

(1835-1892, the younger brother of Maurice Strakosch) and a reporter of the Chicago Tribune who was likely to be George P. Upton,50 Patti is portrayed as an elegant personage who knows she can demand only the best treatment—far from the demure and naturally simple singer

49 Gyula, “Vienna,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1872, ProQuest. 50 It is clear that Upton knew Max Strakosch personally because he mentions that they had spent time together in his 1908 book Musical Memories. He also writes that Max Strakosch was prone to amiable exaggeration in interviews; according to Upton, Strakosch was so optimistic and confident that he often spoke unrealistically about his artists’ popularity and his opera company’s finances. Based on these comments, it seems that Upton had at least read interviews given by Strakosch, if he had not also conducted interviews with the impresario himself. Upton’s comments also suggest that the statements by Strakosch in this 1874 interview may or may not have reflected the truth, but were more indicative of the story Strakosch wanted to tell the public about Patti’s contract. 40 described in the Vienna review above. This interview spans a wide variety of topics related to the responsibilities and challenges facing the impresario and includes what is said to be a copy of

Adelina Patti’s contract with Strakosch, which I will discuss in more detail below. Patti’s character and the character of prima donnas in general comes under discussion in a section with the heading “The Prima Donna,” where the exchange reads as follows:

Reporter—Your prima donna is an exacting creature, is she not—quite a despot in her way? Mr. Strakosch—Well, no, I can’t say I have found it so. If she is, it is because she is imperious by nature. I never have any trouble, at least compared with what I hear of other managers having. Reporter—Does the lady expect many privileges? Mr. Strakosch—Yes, of course she does, and gets all she asks for. She expects her hotel expenses, carriage hire, and all the other expenses she may incur paid by the management. But I can tell you that, exacting as the ladies may be, they are not mean nor stingy. It all rests with them, and if they choose they can be disagreeable or agreeable about it. Reporter—Patti’s contract demands the traveling expenses of six persons. Is that the usual number? Mr. Strakosch—No; that would be too much. They range from one to four generally, besides the prima donna. Reporter—And when you have four ladies in the company, you may expect to pay expenses for twelve? Mr. Strakosch—Exactly.51

The reporter’s first question casts the prima donna (who could be a generic figure here, or could refer to Patti, depending on how the reader interprets this section) as “despot.” Strakosch initially denies this accusation, but follows his denial with “If she is...,” which in a way confirms the accusation of “despot” or “exacting creature” while introducing some disclaimers to soften the blow. The reporter’s use of the word “creature” here could reflect the idea of the prima donna as an otherworldly being; read another way, it could also be a diminutive word for women, as

Upton sometimes used this word when writing about women in other contexts. Strakosch continues to circle around the reporter’s initial question with several ambiguous remarks: the

51 “Italian Opera. Max Strakosch on the Witness-Stand,” Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1874, ProQuest. 41 prima donna is “imperious by nature” and she “gets all she asks for,” but she and other leading ladies “are not mean or stingy” because “It all rests with them, and if they choose they can be disagreeable or agreeable about it.” Perhaps Strakosch is intentionally vague in his response in order to avoid an outright critique of Patti’s character, as she was, after all, both a prima donna among his opera company and the sister-in-law of his brother, Maurice Strakosch. Their familial relationship certainly added another layer of insider perspective to his account of working with

Patti.52 To end this section of the interview, the conversation turns to highlight Patti’s unusually large allowance for the travel expenses of companions. The information that she has special travel privileges shows that, whether or not she had an “imperious” nature, Patti at least held a special status among Strakosch’s singers.

Her Finances

The final thematic area of journalism about Patti in the Tribune which I will explore is her finances. Journalists’ comments about Patti’s finances often tie in with concepts I have discussed above, such as news of her relationships with male relatives and sketches of her character ranging from modest and sensible to elegant and demanding. The topic of the business side of opera has gained momentum in music scholarship since the 1990s, and John Dizikes’

1993 volume Opera in America, in which he frequently discusses the earnings of nineteenth- century opera singers, is particularly central to this study. I will begin my consideration of how the Tribune publicized Patti’s finances by looking at journalism on two contracts which regulated her income: the first was her marriage contract with her first husband, the Marquis de

52 Notably, the Strakosch family’s operatic connections would grow even further when Carl Strakosch, nephew of Maurice and Max Strakosch and another operatic manager, would eventually marry Clara Louise Kellogg in 1887. 42

Caux, in 1868; and the second was her touring contract with her impresario (and the brother of her brother-in-law), Max Strakosch, in 1874.

The details of the financial contract made upon Patti’s marriage to the Marquis de Caux

(or the alleged contract, at least, since it may or may not be accurate) were published in the

Tribune on July 22, 1868 within an article by the Paris correspondent of the New York Times.

The contract was evidently made under the auspices of the Baron James Rothschild, a trusted acquaintance of Patti’s who was a member of a prominent family of bankers in Paris.53 The financial side of Patti’s marriage may have been especially interesting to readers because she was the primary earner of the two, which was unusual for her time. This article reads:

I have just heard the particulars of the marriage settlement agreed to between the Marquis de Caux and Adelina Patti, or rather exacted by Baron James Rothschild, as the friend and guardian of the latter. The sum of 500,000 francs, constituting the whole of the Diva’s fortune, is to be placed in trust for the benefit of herself and children. The principal is not to be touched under any circumstances whatever, Mlle. Patti, herself only enjoying the interest thereof. One-third of her future earnings is to be set aside in the same manner, the remaining two thirds to be used as her husband and herself may decide. The father and mother of the bride are to have each a pension of 6,000 francs, which is to be allocated out of her income. This provision is honorable to Mlle. Patti, whose sentiments of daughterly affection have always shown themselves superior to every other consideration. The Marquis de Caux asked to have the sum of 450,000 francs set aside for the payment of the mortgage on his estates, but on this point the Baron de Rothschild and Maurice Strakosch were inexorable, so that the property will have to be put up for sale, unless the creditors of the Marquis consent to wait for the chance repayment from Adelina’s future earnings, a contingency not very probably from the well known spendthrift habits of her future husband. It is calculated that at present Mlle. Patti earns about 400,000 francs a year, which, with prudence, would soon enable the Marquis to pay off his debts. Accustomed, however, to live at a rate far above his income, it is not likely that he will be induced to put such a restraint on his tastes as will enable him to accomplish so desirable a result. It had been stated that as soon as the marriage took place the services of Strakosch would be dispensed with. So far is this from being the fact, that the Marquis offers a contract to him to continue his services to Mlle. Patti for three years, on terms nearly as advantageous as before. You may rely upon the above being the exact conditions of the marriage settlement, they have been agreed to on both sides, and

53 See “The Rothschild Family,” The Rothschild Archive, accessed August 8, 2020, https://www.rothschildarchive.org/family/. 43

nothing remains but to complete the ceremony itself, which I understand is to take place on the first of August.54

As noted above, Patti was legally represented by her male relatives and guardians in the making of such contracts: in this case, Baron Rothschild and her brother-in-law Maurice Strakosch served as Patti’s representatives. The agreement serves to protect Patti’s existing fortune from being spent as well as to allot her future earnings to specific uses. The journalist indicates that these protections were especially important because her fiancé had significant debts and was rumored to be financially irresponsible. However unsavory these remarks may be, they are followed on the heels by the information that Maurice Strakosch will continue to represent Patti after her marriage; this could be the journalist’s way of assuring readers that despite his flaws, the Marquis is in agreement with Patti’s business advocate and will not be the only one making decisions about her finances (since it was expected that the husband would take on this role after the marriage). Patti is also lauded as an honorable daughter because her contract allows a pension for each of her parents, which serves as another example of the trend for journalists to comment about the prima donna’s morality and character.

The second of Patti’s financial contracts to be published in the Tribune during this period was her (alleged) agreement with impresario Max Strakosch for the year 1874. This was printed on January 25, 1874 in the aforementioned interview between Strakosch and a Tribune reporter

(likely George P. Upton). Strakosch reads the full contract in the interview, saying he has translated it from the original French. Although the agreement stipulates that Patti will come to the United States, she did not actually keep this commitment. Max Strakosch addresses this discrepancy when he prefaces his reading of the contract by saying,

54 “Patti’s Marriage Contract,” Chicago Tribune, July 22, 1868, ProQuest. 44

We have a contract with Adelina Patti to come to the United States now. It has been running since 1869. She promised to come in 1874, but she will not. Meanwhile she pays us a forfeit every year she fails to come.55

He later specifies that Patti pays “a forfeit of 3,000 francs a year” for every year she breaks her commitment.56 We find out later in the contract that this forfeit fee is less than one third of the amount that Patti would make for a single performance (10,000 francs), so the fee was evidently a fairly insignificant penalty for Patti to pay each year she stayed in Europe. Writers in the

Tribune often commented on Patti’s plans to come to the United States and eventual avoidance of returning to this country, noting all the while her continued European success that precluded any need for her to try American markets.

After establishing in this way that the contract is not actually kept, Strakosch nonetheless reads it to answer the reporter’s question about how he makes his engagements with opera singers. He reads:

Adelina Patti, resident in Paris, and by the authority of her husband, of the first part; and Maurice Strakosch, of the second part. This bond witnesseth that Adelina Patti hereby engages herself to be in New York on the 15th of September, 1874. After she has reposed herself from the fatigues of the voyage, she engages to sing in the cities of the United States and Canada, under the direction of Max Strakosch, who represents Maurice Strakosch, 100 nights in operas, oratorios, or concerts, according to the choice of Mr. Strakosch. The representation is to be two or three times a week, as Madame Patti chooses. Madame Patti is not to sing on such days as she travels, or in case of sickness, she engages herself to sing one hundred nights in America, and her engagement shall be prolonged until this is done. The operas which are to be given are to be chosen by common consent, but they are to be those which she has sung in London. Mr. Strakosch engages himself to pay Madame Patti for each of these performances 10,000 francs ($2,500) [currency conversion provided in the original], which are to be paid to her after each representation of opera, oratorio, or concert.

55 “Italian Opera. Max Strakosch on the Witness-Stand,” Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1874, ProQuest. 56 “Italian Opera. Max Strakosch on the Witness-Stand,” Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1874, ProQuest. Based on exchange rates in 1874, 3,000 francs was about $642, which is roughly equal to $15,280 in 2020. Patti’s earnings from a single performance, 10,000 francs, were equal to about $2,140 in 1874 and $50,930 in 2020. U.S. dollars conversion over time provided by “WolframAlpha.com.” For historical conversion of French francs to U.S. dollars, see Rodney Edvinsson, “Historical Currency Converter,” Historicalstatistics.org, Historical Monetary and Financial Statistics for Sweden at the Riksbank, 2016. https://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html. 45

In order to assure Madame Patti of the payment of this sum, he engages himself to give on the first day of March, 1874, a deposit of 500,000 francs. The sum will remain deposited with Rothschild until the completion of the contract. It will be placed in such funds as will secure to Mr. Strakosch interest on the money. The traveling expenses to the United States of Madame Patti, her husband, also two other persons of first and two more persons of second class, who are to be chosen by her, will be defrayed by Mr. Strakosch. The rights of force majeure which may arise, and other things which may interfere with the present contract, are to be decided in favor of Mr. Strakosch. In case there shall be any impediment which may prevent Madame Patti from fulfilling her contract, or may interrupt the execution of this engagement which she contracts by present agreement, Mr. Strakosch has a right to take his securities from Baron Rothschild. In case Mr. Strakosch shall fail to deposit 500,000 francs with Baron Rothschild all the above conditions are null and void, and Madame Patti is fully released. The present engagement is signed by the Marquis de Caux, in his capacity of husband of Madame Patti, who has authorized her to make this contract.57

Here we see that Patti is represented by her husband while her brother-in-law Maurice Strakosch continues to be involved, according to the stipulations of the above 1868 marriage contract. Her banker friend Baron Rothschild is also mentioned as the one who will secure the deposit from

Strakosch before the tour. Once the contract has been fully read and the forfeit for not following it explained, the reporter asks, “Do other prima donnas exact such terms?” and Strakosch replies,

“No, because they cannot.”58 These remarks indicate that Patti’s contract was especially lucrative and provided for more traveling expenses than those of other opera stars, as discussed above.

They also add to the mythology of her public image, casting her as the most powerful prima donna of her time.

Beyond these two contracts, other areas of Patti’s finances covered by writers in the

Tribune were the gifts she received from audiences and her own philanthropic giving. A tongue- in-cheek article of anonymous authorship from December 3, 1871 provides a summary of gifts purportedly bestowed upon Patti by her adoring fans:

57 “Italian Opera. Max Strakosch on the Witness-Stand,” Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1874, ProQuest. 58 “Italian Opera. Max Strakosch on the Witness-Stand,” Chicago Tribune, January 25, 1874, ProQuest. 46

The New York Leader has kept a record for two years, and says that if Patti has received all the presents in that time which have been reported, she has no less than 48 diamond tiaras, 2 chateaux in France, 193 diamond sets, 432 purses, 25 pearl necklaces, 83 single jewels, 65 horses and carriages, 18 pearl sets, 33 silver bouquet-holders, and other small articles of value that would make up a ton.59

Evidently some journalists at the time were quite aware of their colleagues’ tendency to exaggerate. While it is unclear how many of these lavish gifts Patti actually received, she certainly had a substantial discretionary income. Some of this income went to pleasurable pursuits such as the use of a French villa, according to the unnamed writer of the Tribune’s

“Musical Notes” on August 16, 1874, who reports: “Patti has taken a furnished villa at Dieppe, where she goes for three weeks’ sea-bathing.”60

Patti was also credited in the Tribune and other sources for taking part in the practice of charitable giving, which was common for well-to-do women of her time. Hilary Poriss writes about the particular bent toward philanthropy among opera stars of the nineteenth century in her book chapter titled “Prima Donnas and the Performance of Altruism”:

While narratives concerning the charitable deeds of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century singers were the exception, tales of generosity became a rule for nineteenth-century prima donnas, cropping up in biographical sketches of nearly every famous singer who trod upon the lyric stage. Not surprisingly, this upsurge corresponds directly with a precipitous rise in charitable activities across middle- and upper-class society in general.61

Poriss goes on to cite F.K. Prochaska, a scholar of philanthropy by Victorian women, who traces how “certain demographic changes wrought by the industrial revolution opened up a host of new social opportunities for women who found themselves with both increased wealth and more time on their hands.”62 Women of all socioeconomic circumstances were encouraged by religious

59 “Music and the Drama,” Chicago Tribune, December 3, 1871, ProQuest. 60 “Musical Notes,” Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1874, ProQuest. 61 Poriss, 45. 62 Poriss, 45. 47 leaders, politicians, societies, and the media to use their free time and financial resources to support those in need, and charity even became fashionable.63 Philanthropy was an important part of being seen as an upstanding person of the late nineteenth century, especially in the United

States; Poriss writes that “the highest concentration” of accounts of charitable deeds occurs “in

British and American literature, reflecting an Anglo-American obsession with the personal lives of prima donnas and their relative virtue.” She clarifies that “This bias does not mean that prima donnas were any less generous on the Continent; rather it emphasizes the high status, and thus visibility, that good works were granted in Victorian culture.”64 As an important facet of life in the nineteenth-century United States, philanthropy was part of the news that journalists relayed about prima donnas to their readers.

Two articles in the Tribune during this period mention Adelina Patti’s philanthropic activities in Dieppe, France, which was the location of her seaside villa. The first is from

September 12, 1875, when an unnamed writer mentioned in the “Musical Notes” section of the

“Abroad” column that “Madame Adelina Patti gave a concert at Dieppe recently, for the benefit of the poor of the town, and the receipts amounted to about $2,500.”65 The second article about

Patti’s philanthropy in Dieppe is from the same section of the paper on October 8 of the following year. It reads, “Madame Adelina Patti has contributed, by her singing at concerts, to the life-boat at Dieppe, of which she is the godmother, and M. Lebey, of Paris, the godfather.”

The lifeboat was apparently a vessel used by residents of the area who organized rescue-at-sea operations to respond to emergencies, as a modern-day website for the Dieppe region makes

63 Poriss, 45. 64 Poriss, 44. 65 This is roughly equivalent to $61,730 in 2020. “WolframAlpha.com.” 48 clear.66 These articles make it known that Patti’s concerts raised profits to benefit the town where she enjoyed her vacations, helping to shore up her reputation in the process: they seem to say that she was not just an extremely wealthy celebrity who could afford a seaside French villa, but also someone who cared about the people in her town. Poriss insightfully summarizes this mediating role of journalism about prima donnas’ charitable actions: “Depicted as philanthropists, singers came to resemble well-to-do matrons who ‘performed’ their class and femininity by working with the poor. These stories were thus an important means of mediating the ambiguities of their status as rich women with suspect morals, and of establishing them as kind, generous, and most important, respectable contributors to society.”67 Writing newspaper accounts of Patti’s philanthropy was one of the many arenas in which journalists provided readers with news about her as a celebrity and manipulated her public persona.

Although it is instructive to divide journalism about Patti into the above five thematic areas, it soon becomes clear that these topics were interconnected in the actual newspaper articles. Comments about the high quality of Patti’s singing were often accompanied by reports of financially successful performances, for example. Criticism often included descriptions of both the aural and visual elements of Patti’s operatic roles, with journalists critiquing both Patti’s singing and her costumes. The 1868 article publishing her marriage contract was an exposé of both her finances and her personal life, and the way a prima donna handled her finances was often seen as a reflection of her character. Even accounts of her personal appearance had financial connotations when critics suggested that readers could imitate her outfits without exceeding their own incomes. In these ways, articles about Adelina Patti in the Tribune do not

66 “National Society of Lifeguards at Sea,” Dieppe-Maritime Tourisme, Office de tourisme de Dieppe, accessed August 7, 2020, https://uk.dieppetourisme.com/dieppe-uk/national-society-lifeguards-sea. 67Poriss, 57. 49 always fit into clear categories, and when read in their entirety they often came across as more wholistic accounts of the prima donna’s latest activities. As we will see, the same holds true of articles about Clara Louise Kellogg, the singer under consideration in the next chapter.

50

CHAPTER III. JOURNALISM ABOUT CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG IN THE

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Clara Louise Kellogg (1842-1916) was a close contemporary of Adelina Patti. Kellogg was born in Sumterville, South Carolina (which is now Sumter) and spend many of her early years in Birmingham, Connecticut, the hometown of her parents. The family moved to New

York in 1857 so that she could study voice with well-known teachers including Achille Errani and Emanuele Muzio.1 Kellogg began her performing career when she was eighteen years old with a concert tour in 1860 (which included her first performances in Chicago),2 and on February

27 of the following year she debuted at the New York Academy of Music as Gilda in Verdi’s

Rigoletto. She began singing opera in New York and Boston, and soon joined touring companies that traveled to cities across the country. In November 1863 she garnered recognition for her portrayal of Marguerite in the New York premiere of Gounod’s Faust; it would become one of her signature roles, though it was not her personal favorite. Her first European performances were in London in 1867, where she was very well received, and she would often return to sing in

England especially over the following years. She toured the United States in an Italian-language opera troupe led by impresario Max Maretzek that also featured soprano Pauline Lucca from fall

1872 through spring of 1873, then joined business manager C.D. Hess to form her own Kellogg

Grand English Opera Company from 1873 to 1876, a touring company which performed translated Italian, French, and German works as well as works written in English. Kellogg

1 H. Wiley Hitchcock, revised by Katherine K. Preston, “Kellogg, Clara Louise,” in Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. https://doi-org.ezproxy.bgsu.edu/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.14853. 2 “Madame Colson’s Two Operatic Concerts,” Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1860, ProQuest. 51 continued performing in both foreign-language and English-language opera until her marriage to her manager Carl Strakosch (Max Strakosch’s nephew) and retirement in 1887.3

My second case study is centered around Clara Louise Kellogg because she was another leading soprano prominent in the press during the period 1860-1876 whose life and career differed from Adelina Patti’s in several significant ways. Firstly, Kellogg sang in the United

States and, specifically, in Chicago many times during these years, leading to different types of journalistic coverage than Patti (who was in Europe) received during this time. Kellogg was also considered to be one of the first American sopranos to achieve an international reputation; though Patti spend most of her childhood in New York, people often excluded her from being considered American because she was born in Spain, her parents were Italian, and she spent more time in Europe later in her life. Clara Louise Kellogg, on the other hand, was born in the

United States and spent most of her life in this country, and journalists wrote about her success as a matter of national pride. Tied into notions of her American nationality were popular characterizations of Kellogg as a hardworking person, a descriptor that was not applied in articles about Patti as far as I could tell. Finally, Kellogg is particularly interesting because she moved from singing mostly operas in Italian early in her career (and French, English, and

German) to singing primarily English-language opera in the mid-1870s, when she was the artistic director of her own English opera troupe. Journalists’ writings about this period of her life reveal many factors that led to this switch and chronicle her success after moving into English opera.

Meanwhile, Adelina Patti remained in the Italian (and French and German) opera realm, where she reigned as one of the most famous sopranos in Europe and the Americas. Thus, while they

3 Katherine Preston, Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 27. 52 were both active in opera during nearly the same span of time, Kellogg and Patti had very different careers, as journalism about each singer in the Chicago Tribune reflects.

Kellogg’s Voice and Performing Abilities

Reviews of Kellogg’s vocal and dramatic capabilities were abundant in the Chicago

Tribune from 1860 through 1876, years which encompass Kellogg’s rise to fame and tours with her own English Opera Company. Because Kellogg performed frequently in the United States during this period, whereas Adelina Patti spent these years in Europe, criticism about Kellogg in the Tribune tended to be longer and more specific than most of the journalism that I read about

Adelina Patti. The reviews cover Kellogg’s performances in Chicago as well as those given in other cities, about which the Tribune printed articles sent in by correspondents or reprinted from other papers. In light of the many reviews I encountered, the following summary of Kellogg’s abilities by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Katherine Preston seems apt:

Kellogg had a pure, sweet soprano voice of large range and penetrating quality; she was also a good actress. She sang more than 40 roles (in Italian, English and French) and had immense energy and stamina: during the 1874-5 season alone she gave 125 performances. She was the first American-born prima donna to achieve a solid European reputation.4

As Hitchcock and Preston articulate, journalists often remarked on the sweetness of Kellogg’s voice, her ability (or inability) to take on the personalities of characters, and her diligence in study and preparation. Several reviews contained technical descriptions of the qualities of

Kellogg’s voice or her vocal technique. Critics also commented on what types of music and dramatic roles fit her particular talents, and sometimes expressed interest in hearing her sing

English opera.

4 Hitchcock and Preston, “Kellogg, Clara Louise,” in Grove Music Online. 53

Clara Louise Kellogg was introduced to Chicago in an 1860 concert series by a company including Pauline Colson, soprano; Pasquale Brignoli, tenor; Gaetano Ferri, baritone; and

Augestino Susini, a renowned bass who also made his first Chicago appearance at this time. The writer of an unattributed Tribune article titled “Madame Colson’s Two Operatic Concerts” described Colson as “the first prima donna in America, and as estimable a lady as she is an accomplished artist,” who also was a Chicago favorite. The other artists are likewise praised, and then the journalist writes of the newest member of the company:

With all these artists, is Miss Kellogg, who is new to us, but her reputation is highly spoken of by the eastern press. She is an American cantatrice, possesses a powerful soprano voice and an extraordinary talent, and is a beautiful young lady, belonging to one of the best families of New York.5

Though only one sentence is given here to acquaint readers with Kellogg, the combination of comments on her vocal talent, American nationality, beauty, and good upbringing present a microcosm of the topics journalists would frequently return to in articles about Kellogg over the next two decades.

Critics provided more detailed descriptions of Kellogg’s vocal qualities in their reviews of her performances in other cities during the 1860s. Despite the outbreak of the Civil War, opera performance continued in regions distanced from the fighting, and Kellogg toured throughout the years of the conflict and beyond. A New York correspondent for the Tribune with the pseudonym “Vidi” wrote in an article about Jacob Grau’s opera company, on April 15, 1865:

Miss Kellogg is a greater favorite than any other prima donna who ever appeared in New York. The tones of her voice are pure, sweet, clear, like the tones of a silver bell. Never attempting a higher scale than her voice is naturally adapted to, she seldom makes discord or scratches. Although unable to fill our great barn of an Academy with her tones, Miss Kellogg is able to fill the house with people.6

5 “Madame Colson’s Two Operatic Concerts,” Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1860, ProQuest. 6 Vidi, “New York Correspondence,” Chicago Tribune, April 15, 1865, ProQuest. 54

The correspondent then went on to laud Kellogg’s good character and education in America, while acknowledging a few rumors about her in the New York press. Positive appraisals of her voice also came from London, where Kellogg made her European debut two years later in

Gounod’s Faust. A review of her highly successful debut by a London correspondent for the

New York Tribune on December 1, 1867 ends with the statement: “She was judged on her merits, and the judgment, whether in respect to her voice, her method, her acting, or her personal fitness for the stage, is favorable without qualification.”7

Kellogg returned to Chicago for a series of concerts in February 1869, and for this occasion the writer of the Tribune’s “Amusements” column (likely Upton) provided a short biography of her in addition to reviewing her singing. After comments on the specific pieces she performed, the reviewer gives the following detailed assessment of her voice:

Miss Kellogg’s voice is a legitimate soprano, very agreeable in quality and very elastic, the chief charm of which is its clearness and freshness. It comes from the chest cavity, throughout its entire register, and always marked by this characteristic of bell-like clearness. Her execution is very intelligent and cultivated, from the forming of a trill to the polished rounding off of a phrase or a cadence. Her enunciation is very perfect, both of English and Italian, the words being always exactly fitted to its musical text and always delivered with a nicety of expression that makes them perfectly intelligible, especially in her ballad singing, where such a gift is rare with singers. Of her dramatic capacity we need not speak, as that has already been exposed to the severe test of opera. All these advantages pass to her credit. As an offset, she has some slight conceite [sic] of method, a tendency to over-elaborate a melody, a defect of sliding and not always boldly attacking a tone rigidly as it is written, and sometimes an unpleasantness of voice in sustained tones….8

This writer balances an appreciation for many features of Kellogg’s craft (including her gift with languages, which others would also mention) with clear critiques of areas for improvement. The above praise of her uncommonly good English enunciation and “ballad singing” could also be seen as early endorsements of her fitness for English-language opera (as critics frequently used

7 “Musical,” Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1867, ProQuest. 8 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1869, ProQuest. 55 the term “ballad singing” for certain songs and operas in English), a connection that would be explicitly made by journalists in later years.

After Kellogg’s initial years of fame in the 1860s, critical comments on her voice in the

Tribune from the early 1870s reflect the highs and lows of her continuing career as a prima donna. During these years, the musical scene in Chicago was thrown into disarray when theaters, residences, instruments, and music were destroyed in the great Chicago fire of 1871; theaters were quickly rebuilt, however, and within the next couple of years operatic troupes returned to the city. In the meantime, musical journalism in the Tribune directly after the conflagration focused on the rebuilding process. Concerts by local musicians soon started up wherever there was a place for them, and the papers reported on these as well as musical activity in other cities.

One such report concerning Kellogg was given by the “Amusements” writer of the Tribune on

February 25, 1872, who noted:

Kellogg’s repertoire is said to be larger than that of any living prima donna, being composed of twenty-five operas, in none of which has she been as low as mediocrity, and, in nearly all of which, she has been superior to the average first lady.9

Later that year, in an unattributed column titled “Elsewhere” of June 16, 1872, we find critiques intermixed with praise from London, where Kellogg was to sing for a royal audience at

Buckingham Palace on June 20:

Among the many words of commendation bestowed upon Miss Kellogg since her last engagement in London, there is here and there a syllable of dissent. A critic in the Queen newspaper finds that, although she has improved since her former visit, in method and acting, her voice is ‘thinner in timber,’ [sic] and, in excited scenes, her intonation is strained and imperfect. The same authority, nevertheless, acknowledges the great enthusiasm with which she has been on every occasion received.10

9 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 25, 1872, ProQuest. 10 “Elsewhere,” Chicago Tribune, June 16, 1872, ProQuest. 56

Despite this criticism, the above-mentioned idea of Kellogg’s improvement over the course of her career was often repeated. This was the case when she returned to Chicago in 1873 on tour with an opera company led by Max Maretzek despite low audience turnout on her nights as compared to the nights of German soprano Pauline Lucca, with whom she alternated; I will discuss this tour in more detail at the end of this chapter. The unnamed writer of an article of

February 4, 1873 titled “Italian Opera” tries to stir up support for Kellogg (so that she stands a chance to compete with Lucca) by citing her continued hard work as a source of national pride:

A few years ago, when Miss Kellogg first appeared in opera here, we were all delighted with her, and were proud to claim her as our singer. She is to-day a better singer and a greater artist than she was then. She has matured, both vocally and dramatically. She has studied conscientiously all this time. But she is still a rising young singer, struggling like a true woman, in every honorable way, to win and wear the laurels so proudly worn by her contemporaries. She needs encouragement, and the best encouragement she can have is recognition by her own countrymen.11

This author thought that Kellogg’s diligent work and improved performing abilities should motivate Chicago audiences buy tickets and give her an enthusiastic reception. Kellogg’s continual work to make her way in the operatic realm would perhaps not result in great acclaim on that early 1873 tour, as I will discuss below, but she would find significant success when she made the switch to English opera from 1873 to 1876. The idea of Kellogg as hardworking is a frequent occurrence in the paper which I will also examine in more detail later.

In addition to these comments about the particular qualities of Kellogg’s voice, critics also wrote a great deal about the ways in which she portrayed various operatic characters, comments which encompass both her acting abilities and how the roles suited her vocally.

Reviews of how she created specific roles are numerous and lengthy, and they are too detailed to discuss in depth here. I encountered exhaustive coverage of her roles in at least fifteen operas

11 “Italian Opera,” Chicago Tribune, February 4, 1873, ProQuest. 57 and one oratorio during this period. To give a sense of the main works in Kellogg’s repertoire as identified by critics, I provide a list of roles which journalists reviewed in detail in the table below, with works organized alphabetically by the composer’s surname.

Table 1. Kellogg’s roles reviewed in the Chicago Tribune, 1860-1876

Role Composer Title Date(s) of review(s) Arline Michael William Balfe The Bohemian Girl 01/04/1876 Linda Gaetano Donizetti Linda di Chamounix 04/05/1861, 02/07/1873 Lucia “ Lucia di Lammermoor 12/03/1876 Martha Friedrich von Flotow Martha 05/07/1873, 12/03/1873 Marguerite Charles Gounod Faust 11/21/1867, 02/08/1871, 12/05/1873, 10/15/1874, 11/21/1876 Mireille “ Mireille 08/18/1872 Soprano George Frideric Handel Messiah 01/23/1871 Catterina Giacomo Meyerbeer Star of the North 03/02/1876 Donna Anna Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Don Giovanni 02/08/1873, 05/10/1873 Zerlina “ “ 10/16/1874 Susanna “ The Marriage of Figaro 01/21/1876 Ninetta Gioachino Rossini La gazza ladra 06/07/1868 Filina Ambroise Thomas Mignon 02/11/1873 Gilda Giuseppe Verdi Rigoletto 05/28/1868, 07/28/1872 Violetta “ La Traviata 02/05/1873 Leonora “ Il Trovatore 02/05/1873, 02/12/1873, 12/12/1873, 10/20/1874, 12/19/1876 Senta Richard Wagner The Flying Dutchman 12/10/1876

For the purpose of this study, a few generalizations about the content of reviews for some of these roles will have to suffice. Unless otherwise stated, all of these reviews are from the

Tribune’s “Amusements” column and were presumably written by George P. Upton or another 58 member of the paper’s staff. Thus, I start with Balfe’s work: in the Tribune’s January 4, 1876 review of her Arline in The Bohemian Girl (performed in English), the critic affirms that the

“ballad singing” required in this “light opera” suits Kellogg’s particular talent for this style, praises her vocal dexterity and enunciation, and calls the portrayal charming and vivacious, though “[h]er spoken lines lack in dramatic force.”12 Regarding the two Donizetti roles, the writer praises her “freshness and grace, her ease of manner, and her bright, sparkling voice” as traits that made her a natural fit for the part of Linda in a February 7, 1873 review;13 and a review of her Lucia on December 3, 1876 contains the critic’s sentiment that it is “one of Miss

Kellogg’s best parts, and one which she always sings with great fervor and artistic finish.”14

Kellogg performed the titular role of Flotow’s Martha twice in 1873: the first time was in

May, when she sang it in Italian with the Maretzek company, and the second time was in

December, when she sang it in English with her own opera company. The critic remarked of the

May performance that “There is probably no opera in which Miss Kellogg appears to better advantage than ‘Martha,’” and noted that the role suited her “high” and “penetrating” voice

“which is apt to be thin in places, but is so light, and sparkling, and pretty withal, that, in music like that of ‘Martha,’ it calls for no fault-finding.” Her acting was found wanting, however: “It is true that much more may be made of the character dramatically, than Miss Kellogg ever thinks of making out of any character; but her friends find graces enough to compensate her for the lack of the dramatic element, and have ceased to expect it.”15 After the December performance of

Martha the critic wrote that although Kellogg was recovering from a cold and showed “very perceptible anxiety that everything should go right on the stage,” she still gave her best singing,

12 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, January 4, 1876, ProQuest. 13 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 7, 1873, ProQuest. 14 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, December 3, 1876, ProQuest. 15 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, May 7, 1873, ProQuest. 59 enunciation of the English text, and “an element of refinement and grace” to the role, though she missed “the subtle comedy of the character.”16

The role of Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust was probably Kellogg’s most famous one, as she had been the first to perform it in New York in 1863 and would repeat it to great acclaim in

French and English for decades to come. A reviewer of Kellogg’s debut in England writing for the London Times in November of 1867 praised her “sentimental” portrayal of this character and

“flexible” voice that was “merit not to be overestimated! always in tune,” although she had “an occasional tendency to drag the time and over-elaborate expression.” That writer calls her “the original Margaret of America” and welcomes her into the “the brilliant gallery” of renowned

Marguerites, comprised of “Mdlle. Titiens (the Italian original), and Madam Miolan Carvalho

(the French original), to Mdlle. Lucca (the German original), Mdlles. Adelina Patti and Christine

Nillson [sic].”17 Her reputation as one of the best-ever Marguerites was corroborated in myriad reviews of later years. Thus the writer of a December 5, 1873 review in the Chicago Tribune states:

We have written so many times of Miss Kellogg’s Marguerite that there is little left us [sic] to say which would be new. It is altogether the best character in her repertoire, and one of which she has evidently made a close and careful study, without imitating other artists who have attained celebrity in this role. There is no trace of her own individuality in the personation, and it is thoroughly consistent and harmonious to the end.18

The way this writer describes Kellogg’s acting using the word “individuality” here is notable.

Kellogg is praised for her unique concept of the role, but the reviewer actually applauds her by saying that “there is no trace of her own individuality” in the character, meaning that she is entirely Marguerite while on stage without a trace of Kellogg. I found similar language in other

16 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, December 3, 1873, ProQuest. 17 “Miss Kellogg in London,” Chicago Tribune, November 21, 1867, ProQuest. 18 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1873, ProQuest. 60 reviews; critics seemed to conceptualize a good dramatic performance as one in which the prima donna abandoned her own “individuality” and completely took on the personality of her character.

In the operas of Mozart and Verdi, the critic (or critics) writing for the Tribune thought that Kellogg was well-equipped for some of the roles she played, but ill-equipped for others.

When she played Zerlina in an English version of Don Giovanni in October of 1874, for example, the critic said that she “brought out the coquettish phases [sic] of the character with exceeding playfulness and grace, and with such a dainty air, that even Seguin, who was a very dapper Masetto, became inspired with vocal spirit and forgot himself on one or two occasions so far that he came very near singing….”19 Her Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, which she sang in English in January 1876, was likewise well-received.20 Kellogg’s portrayal of Donna Anna did not garner very positive reviews, however; though her letter aria in a May 1873 performance (in

Italian) received some praise, still the reviewer wrote that “Miss Kellogg took the dismal part of

Donna Anna, and rendered it more dismal than ever by her passionless and spiritless action,”21 echoing a review of her performance with the same Maretzek-led company in February of that year:

Donna Anna is a heavy character in action for Kellogg, who needs something less sombre and funereal than the peripatetic woman in black, forever traversing the stage in company with those two other ravens, Don Ottavio and Donna Elvira, rehearsing her Don Giovannic woes. She gave to it, however, her best energy and determination, and sung her score magnificently, frequently carrying off enthusiastic rounds of applause.22

19 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, October 16, 1874, ProQuest. The bass Edward Seguin, husband of contralto Zelda Seguin, was the target of jokes in the Tribune about his inability to sing on more than one occasion. 20 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, January 20, 1876, ProQuest. 21 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1873, ProQuest. 22 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 8, 1873, ProQuest. 61

This notion of a role being too “heavy” for Kellogg was repeated in reviews of her portrayal of

Leonora in Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Leonora was described in a February 1873 article as “a grander and heavier character than those in which she [Kellogg] has usually appeared here,”23 and whether in Italian or English performances, the author(s) of reviews in the Tribune typically stated that Kellogg gave her best effort but lacked the “power and force, and dramatic fire”24 in both voice and acting that were required to play the character well. The other Verdi roles of

Gilda and Violetta suited her much better, according to critics. The writer of a May 28, 1868 review for the London Orchestra called Kellogg’s Gilda “a triumph,” and later declared that

“[s]eldom has the serious, and thus the elevated, side of Gilda’s character received such exemplification. The devotion of the daughter placed side by side with the abandon of the lover gave a great and hitherto unexplored effect to certain scenes….”25 Of her Violetta in an Italian- language performance in February 1873, the critic wrote that she “succeeded in making the personation a thoroughly artistic one, and marked in many respects with rare beauty and grace, as well as a faithful adherence to the many unpleasant phases of the consumptive Violetta.”26

Thus critics used the language of “light” and “heavy” roles to describe which parts suited

Kellogg, possibly conflating the vocal and theatrical elements of these roles. Perhaps it was also

23 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1873, ProQuest. 24 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1873, ProQuest. There was one exception to this trend: In a review of October 20, 1874, the critic said that Kellogg sang Leonora “with more than her ordinary effect and vigor. As compared, in fact, with the presentation of the same roles last winter, the change was very remarkable.” The critic continued: “Her dramatic grasp of the character was marked with a degree of fervor and force which shows that there are occasions when she can attack these very heavy roles with a large degree of success, although they must seriously tax her powers” (“Amusements,“ Chicago Tribune, October 20, 1874, ProQuest). This stroke of genius appears to have been an anomaly, however, because a review of an English-language performance on December 19, 1876 again reads, in part: “All that need be said is that Miss Kellogg’s performance once more demonstrates that while her singing is well nigh perfect, and her various arias were delivered with consummate beauty and grace of vocalism, her acting of the part is very deficient. The part is, as we have often said before, dramatically beyond her. She has not the breadth, strength, or fire to interpret the dramatic side of this role” (“The Opera,” Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1876, ProQuest). 25 “Patti and Kellogg,” Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1868, ProQuest. 26 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1873, ProQuest. 62 the public image that critics constructed for Kellogg as a well-mannered American young woman that was better suited to “light” roles and did not fit well with the “heavy” roles of Donna

Anna and Leonora, who were more passionate and strong-willed.

Before leaving the topic of Kellogg’s roles, it is interesting to note a couple of outliers among the above list in terms of genre. One is Handel’s Messiah, the only oratorio I found among these reviews, for which Kellogg sang the soprano part in a January 1871 performance with the Mendelssohn Union and conductor George Bristow in New York City.27 The review of her performance, reprinted from the New York Tribune, called this performance “a distinct success” in which Kellogg “formed her style upon good models,” although she was mildly critiqued for lacking “strength of voice,” speeding through certain ornamentations, and occasionally repeating words that do not repeat in the original text.28 The other unusual choice that I refer to is Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, which Kellogg performed in English with her opera company during their 1876-1877 season, at a time when the operas of Wagner were just beginning to gain popularity in the United States. I did not find a review of this performance by the Tribune’s staff, but the performance was discussed in a sizeable letter to the editor titled “The Heroine of the ‘Flying Dutchman,’ and Miss Kellogg’s Personification of Her,

Treated as a Psychological Study—By a Physician,” by a person who signed with the initials

“E.M.H.” This writer had seen Kellogg’s performance, and here enthusiastically describes how her movements, facial expressions, and attitudes closely paralleled those of real people in psychological distress whom that physician had treated.29 Thus even Kellogg participated in the

27 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1871, ProQuest. 28 “Kellogg in Oratorio,” Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1871, ProQuest. 29 E.M.H. “The Heroine of the ‘Flying Dutchman,’ and Miss Kellogg’s Personification of Her, Treated as a Psychology Study—By a Physician.” Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1876, ProQuest. 63 growing Wagner craze to some extent, although she was most active in Italian opera and

English-language opera.30

The topic of repertoire and Kellogg’s best-received roles is somewhat connected to her transition from singing primarily foreign-language opera to singing primarily English-language opera in 1873. Kellogg had spent the fall, winter, and spring of 1872-1873 touring with Max

Maretzek’s opera company, in which she and Pauline Lucca were the two featured prima donnas.

The papers reported a rivalry between the two leading women, following the old operatic trope— a controversy which may have been the work of a trouble-maker involved in their business management and the press, as I will discuss at the end of this chapter. An unnamed writer of an article titled “The Operatic War” in the Tribune on October 31, 1872, tried to reconcile the conflict by stating that each soprano had her particular talents:

Miss Kellogg fills one place, and Lucca another. Miss Kellogg is a pretty and nice little mezzo-soprano vocalist, admirably adapted to light parts, like the Amina of ‘Sonnambula,’ or the Zerlinas of ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘Fra Diavolo.’ Lucca aspires to the heavier roles, and has the dramatic ability to fill them, whatever may be said technically of her vocal ability.31

And later on, the writer stated that “[t]he management [of the troupe] cannot do without either of them.” Yet as Kellogg and Lucca alternated nights, Lucca’s ticket sales were much higher than

Kellogg’s, as I will explore in more detail below, and at the end of the season Lucca was asked to stay in Maretzek’s troupe the next year while Kellogg was not. While the reasons for the disagreements of that season were complicated and multifaceted, it seems that it was a good time for Kellogg to start her own opera company, where she would have more chance of performing roles that suited her voice and more authority in making her own artistic decisions (she would be

30 Another source of information about Kellogg’s repertoire is the Brooklyn Academy of Music Archives, where her performances in New York are catalogued. See “Individual: Clara Louise Kellogg,” BAM Archives, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 2017. http://levyarchive.bam.org/Detail/entities/5829. 31 “The Operatic War.” Chicago Tribune, October 31, 1872, ProQuest. 64 the company’s artistic director).32 Critics had been suggesting for years that she try singing more

English opera, which they thought well-suited to her voice and skills, and despite the fact that there was a financial downturn in the United States when she finally did so—the Panic of 1873— her English-language opera company turned out to be quite successful.

Her Appearance

Like Adelina Patti, Clara Louise Kellogg was a celebrity who received media attention in nearly every area of her life, both on and off stage. As in journalism about Patti, writers sometimes mentioned what Kellogg wore to social events or other functions. For example, the author of a May 7, 1867 article noted that Kellogg “was dressed in a green silk trimmed with white” at the charity ball for the New York Academy of Music, where she sat in one of the theatre’s boxes as a spectator.33 George P. Upton, writing as Peregrine Pickle, himself poked fun at the excessively close attention paid by some of his journalistic colleagues to Kellogg’s attire and other aspects of her personal life in a facetious article of April 14, 1867:

The Jenkins of the New York Home Journal informs the world that Miss Kellogg wears a gray poplin dress, which shades purple in a strong light, and that her horse cloth bears the monogram C.L.K. in scarlet embroidery. This information is gratifying and important, but it would have been still more important if Jenkins had only told us on what days she cuts her dainty finger nails, the complexion of her chignon, and what she takes for neuralgia; also, what she thinks of the Sherman Reconstruction Bill, and the action of Governor Sharkey thereon.34

32 For example, on November 17, 1870 in the “Amusements” column, an anonymous critic wrote of the ending of a concert by Kellogg: “The encore followed, as a matter of course, and from this point on, her numbers were all in the ballad school, in which she added to her sweetness of tone and smoothness of finish a dramatic shading and clearness of enunciation which were not only very effective, but undeniably point her the way she ought to go now that her old field of Italian opera is desolate viz.: into English opera.” And on August 20, 1871: “Why, in view of the popularity which Parepa has earned for English Opera, does not Kellogg join its ranks.” Another article on “The Amusement Outlook” from April 7, 1872, contains the following prod: “Clara Louise Kellogg, who has resolutely persisted in doing nothing for the past two years, rather than to go into English opera, is also under contract to Mr. Jarrett, and will appear with Lucca” (“Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, November 17, 1870, ProQuest). 33 “A Grand Ball,” Chicago Tribune, May 7, 1867, ProQuest. 34 Peregrine Pickle, “The World of Amusement,” Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1867, ProQuest. 65

While Upton joked about this intense scrutiny of Kellogg by another critic, he himself perpetuated such watchfulness by continuing to write on similar topics.

To the everyday newspaper reader, Kellogg seems to have been a fashion icon worth emulating. In an article of August 17, 1874, a writer for the New York Sun under the pen name

Eli Perkins (whose real name was Melville D. Landon) describes observing the outfits of women at the Saratoga horse races and discussing them with Kellogg, who he writes was “famous for being one of the most correctly-dressed young ladies in America.”35 During their interview

Kellogg evaluates the women’s outfits, tells Perkins how she would correct their fashion mistakes, and then makes an analogy between musical pitches and colors in order to advise young women to “wear symphonies in color.”36 Besides this instance of Kellogg bestowing direct fashion advice upon readers, other Tribune articles show different types of evidence for the notion that people admired her habits of dress. In a May 2, 1869 article on the new hats displayed in a Lake street millinery, for example, a writer under the sobriquet “Vic” informs us that a hat style was named after Kellogg: “THE KELLOGG was a Clara Louise affair, of brown straw, with numerous graceful loops, of soft brown ribbon, and bruche of wild flowers. It was a hat for an artist or dreamer to wear, and fell naturally into poses and airs—$10.”37 The enduring popularity of this poetic headpiece is confirmed by an anonymous writer in a “Fashion” article on November 8, 1874, who also mentions a popular style named after soprano Pauline Lucca.38

Apparently the names of prima donnas were employed strategically as a type of product

35 Eli Perkins, “Dress at Saratoga,” Chicago Tribune, August 17, 1874, ProQuest. 36 Kellogg explains her advice of wearing “symphonies in color” to Perkins in more depth; this idea roughly translates to wearing harmonious colors that result from mixing several hues rather than wearing bright and clashing primary colors. It is interesting to note the possible connections to current thinking about synesthesia in Kellogg’s analogy between colors and musical pitches, which she elaborates in more detail in the article. Eli Perkins, “Dress at Saratoga,” Chicago Tribune, August 17, 1874, ProQuest. 37 Vic, “The Fashions,” Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1869, ProQuest. For a currency comparison, $10 in 1869 is roughly equivalent to $199 in 2020. “WolframAlpha.com.” 38 “Fashion,” Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1874, ProQuest. 66 endorsement, even if these associations were potentially made without the singers’ knowledge.

Upton notes in his book Musical Memories that this same tactic was used in New York in the year 1850, when shops sold “Jenny Lind bonnets, gloves, coats, hats, parasols, combs, jewelry, bric-a-brac, and fineries” during the initial craze surrounding that singer’s arrival to the country.39

Regarding Kellogg’s wardrobe on the opera stage, critics published in the Tribune alternately critiqued and praised her operatic costumes. The author of the “Amusements” column

(likely George P. Upton) for February 2, 1869 praised Kellogg’s vocalism and character, but criticized “an extreme of style” that could distract from her singing,40 and five days later, Upton

(as Peregrine Pickle) wrote a rant against Kellogg’s excessive panniers (side hoops for her dress).41 It appears from comments of this sort that Kellogg had a fair amount of freedom in choosing how to present herself for each role. The writer of a January 24, 1867 article, for instance, mentions that some audience members admired Kellogg’s choice of makeup in her well-known portrayal of Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust, stating:

Some enthusiastic admirers of Miss Kellogg insist that her ‘make-up’ is a faithful portrait of Marguerite in ‘Faust,’ and regard it as something very wonderful. But in her case it was purely imitative—the result of the study of Kaulbach’s picture [an 1860 engraving of the character in Goethe’s novel by Wilhelm von Kaulbach42].43

This idea of Kellogg studying different sources to inform her costuming choices is echoed by other journalists. The writer of the Tribune’s “Amusements” column on December 5, 1873 praises Kellogg for careful scholarship in her portrayal of the same character, Marguerite, in an

English-language performance of Faust:

39 Upton, Musical Memories, 20. 40 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1869, ProQuest. 41 Peregrine Pickle, “The World of Amusement,” Chicago Tribune, February 7, 1869, ProQuest. 42 Wilhelm von Kaulbach, “Gretchen,” 1859, akgimages, accessed August 18, 2020. https://www.akg- images.de/archive/Gretchen-2UMDHUWJXTDL.html. 43 “Ristori,” Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1867, ProQuest. 67

Notwithstanding the conventional white draperies and blonde braids, neatly blue- ribboned, her make-up, while it is true to the character, is to a large extent original and her own, fashioned after the poet’s own description and the acknowledged representations of the great German painters. In this respect we have, therefore, a Marguerite who does not offend the eye, but always presents a pleasing and effective picture.44

The writer of the “Amusements” column expresses a similar sentiment in a review of Kellogg’s lead role in Michael William Balfe’s opera The Talisman on April 18, 1875, mentioning that:

The dresses, especially those of the principal personages, gave evidence of considerable study and research, and were most becoming. Miss Kellogg appeared as Edith, and well represented the Saxon maiden.45

Thus, costuming and makeup appeared to be at least partly the result of artistic choices by the performers in Kellogg’s day, as opposed to having a costume designer be the authority on such decisions as is conventional in opera today. Photographs of Kellogg as herself and in costume can be found in Appendix A of this study.

Critics’ remarks about Kellogg’s physical characteristics in these reviews also reveal differences between nineteenth-century thinking about operatic roles and the ideals of objectivity typically held around roles and casting today. In many instances reviewers commented on the appropriateness of Kellogg’s looks for the types of roles she played, perhaps suggesting something like typecasting, or opined on her attractiveness. Comments in this vein are present in a biographical article about Kellogg from April 11, 1869, which ends as follows:

She is an established prime favorite everywhere. There have been far greater singers than she, and are to-day [sic]; but she is one of the few prime donne who can represent a beautiful and charming woman without compelling us to shut our eyes and take refuge in our imagination because our vision is so revolted at the homely heroines of the operatic stage. For that let us be aesthetically thankful, and remember the pretty Clara in our lyric prayers.46

44 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1873, ProQuest. 45 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, April 18, 1875, ProQuest. 46 J.H.B., “Personal Sketches. Clara Louise Kellogg,” Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1869, ProQuest. 68

This writer implies that prima donnas can be successful without being conventionally attractive, but attractiveness is preferable. Additionally, having the right physical attributes could apparently make a singer more suitable for a role, as the writer of the August 18, 1872

“Amusements” column implies in a discussion of Kellogg’s forthcoming role in Gounod’s opera

Mireille:

Moreover, it would be difficult to name an artist now on the stage more suited in every way, physically and otherwise, to represent M. Gounod’s ideal Mireille than Miss Kellogg, who can look, act, and sing the character alike perfectly.47

Here, Kellogg is praised not just for her abilities to act and sing in ways that faithfully portray character, but also for her physical resemblance of the character, a trait that is less the result of hard work than it is of a chance fulfilment of societal expectations.

Her Personal Life

The attention paid to Kellogg’s life by the media also extended into her pleasures, tastes, and social relationships. Brief snippets in the newspaper contained notes about her pastimes, from benign activities such as purchasing art by “Canadian watercolor artists”48 and enjoying a circus performance to the more problematic activity of being “among the interested spectators” at a blackface minstrel show in Chicago.49

Another topic addressed in the papers with some frequency was her unmarried status.

Stories of alleged engagements ran rampant in the Tribune and other papers, as they did in

47 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1872, ProQuest. 48 “Abroad,” Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1875, ProQuest. 49 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, May 13, 1873, ProQuest. This article mentions Kellogg’s attendance at both a circus and a minstrel show in Chicago. See also Susan Cook’s book chapter on how American prima donnas, including Clara Louise Kellogg, sang songs attributed to “mammy” figures and performers of blackface minstrelsy. Explaining that white American prima donnas used these songs to musically assert their own “normative, nationalistic whiteness,” Cook writes that “the intimate, symbiotic relationship between the mammy and the high- born Southern lady” was influential in the ways it “shaped ideas of female vocality, domesticity, and maternalism profoundly in the American imagination.” Susan Cook, “‘In Imitation of My Negro Mammy’: Alma Gluck and the American Prima Donna,” in The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 290-307. 69 journalism about Adelina Patti. The rumor mill had her “pledged” to an artist named Bierstadt in

1865,50 “about to marry a wealthy New Yorker” in 1871,51 having “just declined an invitation to become a Russian Countess” in 1872,52 engaged “to be married after Lent to a well-known

Episcopalian” in January of 1876 (and not engaged the next day),53 and again engaged to a

“happy man” who remained anonymous in March of 1876.54 Many journalists’ sentiments seemed to reflect what a New York correspondent of the Tribune under the pen name “Beauty” wrote in the January 23, 1876 article: “Clara Louise had better get a fiancee [sic] at once—the papers won’t let her rest until she is married.”55

Kellogg herself was said to have expressed exasperation over the ceaseless speculation of the press in the article by a New York correspondent of the Tribune printed on March 13, 1876.

The writer first cites the latest engagement rumor, then provides the following information:

Clara Louise Kellogg has been interviewed on the subject many times, but she aggravatingly says, “My own affairs are mine, and not the public’s. I positively decline to say whether these stories are true or false. Some years ago similar stories were printed about me, and I gladly contradicted them, but I was told that my denials were evasive, and afterward that I had jilted a worthy gentleman merely to make good my denials,—in other words, that I lied about it for a purpose; so now I’ll say nothing, and if people say that is proof that the stories are true, why I cannot help it. They cannot say I encouraged them.”

Kellogg apparently could not satisfy the papers even by contradicting such rumors. Later in this article the correspondent also writes,

Right here it may be said that the managers in this country have a decided dislike to their most popular actresses forming matrimonial alliances, and, even when these occur in spite of the managers, the old title of ‘Miss’ is preserved, regardless of the fact that it is a misnomer.56

50 Vidi, “New York Correspondence.” Chicago Tribune, April 15, 1865, ProQuest. 51 “Amusements Abroad.” Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1871, ProQuest. 52 “Personal,” Chicago Tribune, September 9, 1872, ProQuest. 53 Beauty, “New York Gossip,” Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1876, ProQuest. 54 Beauty, “New York Gossip,” Chicago Tribune, March 13, 1876, ProQuest. 55 Beauty, “New York Gossip,” Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1876, ProQuest. 56 Beauty, “New York Gossip,” Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1876, ProQuest. 70

Based on this comment, it seems that remaining unmarried may have made it easier for a prima donna to continue along her career path because of the working conditions established by managers and others, although there are many different factors which could come into play in any singer’s unique situation. Kellogg was also reported in a February 1875 article by a correspondent with the initials “R.A.” to have been approached for advice by two young women aspiring to be opera singers, and to have advised them not to marry, saying, “‘I am 32 years old, and I have never had time for beaux.’”57 These may or may not actually be Kellogg’s words. In any case, Kellogg married her manager Carl Strakosch, nephew of impresario Max Strakosch, in

1887, at which time she also retired.58 Perhaps this choice indicates that it would not have been practical or acceptable for her to marry and continue her career.

Accounts of Kellogg’s early life in the Tribune also featured some sensational stories, although a common (and less shocking) narrative of her upbringing seemed to gradually emerge after making the rounds of various other American newspapers and publications. It is pertinent here to mention that Clara Louise Kellogg eventually wrote her own story in her book Memoirs of an American Prima Donna, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1913; her own account of her life is still available to read today.59 She writes of her parents and grandmothers as musical people who sang and played instruments, and who recognized her musical talents when she was young. She also states that she focused on learning piano as a child, and though she sang in the church choir, she did not think of studying singing until Colonel Henry G. Stebbins (a director of the New York Academy of Music) heard her sing and encouraged her to begin lessons in her early teen years. Kellogg also writes that she learned to play the banjo as a child. Additionally,

57 R.A., “The Hub,” Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1875, ProQuest. 58 Hitchcock and Preston, “Kellogg, Clara Louise,” in Grove Music Online. 59 Clara Louise Kellogg, Memoirs of an American Prima Donna (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913), http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38023. 71 like Upton, she too held a Jenny Lind concert among her earliest musical memories, and she heard Adelina Patti sing in New York a year before her own first performance there.60

One of the more sensational tales of Kellogg’s upbringing was printed in the Tribune on

January 24, 1865, and is credited to a “New York correspondent of a London paper.”61 From the start, the Tribune’s writer acknowledges the tale to be mostly false: it is described as “gossip about Miss Kellogg, some of which is true, but the greater part is pure fabrication.” Despite this disclaimer, the article is still printed in full, and some of the many alleged elements of Kellogg’s story which it shares are: her father “brought her up as if she were a boy;” she “is proficient with the violin, French horn, bassoon, trombone,” and banjo; her room is decorated with “boxing gloves,” “pictures of famous horses and dogs,” a stuffed terrier, and two statuettes of soldiers; she is “one of the most daring horsewomen of New York;” “she is a perfect misanthrope” and has a “dislike for the society of men” besides her father; and overall, that “she is a person of strong masculine proclivities, softened and subdued by an exquisite feminine grace.”62 All of these attributes (besides misanthropy) were associated with masculinity at the time; perhaps the writer was suggesting that the reason for Kellogg’s unmarried status was a tendency towards masculine interests and away from typical relationships between men and women for her time.

Today we oppose such strong gender binaries and strive not to make generalizations about a person’s identity based on their wall decorations, taxidermy pieces, or preferred modes of exercise. In Kellogg’s day, when gender binaries were strictly upheld, whoever originated this article seems to have taken the idea of Kellogg as an independent and spirited young woman and run with it, crafting a tale that was likely to generate shock value among readers.

60 Kellogg, 1-15. 61 “A London View of Miss Kellogg,” Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1865, ProQuest. 62 “A London View of Miss Kellogg,” Chicago Tribune, January 24, 1865, ProQuest. 72

More commonly, narratives about Kellogg’s upbringing printed in the Tribune portrayed her as a hardworking young person who persevered through challenges to achieve her dreams.

Such an account was given in an article citing the actress and known feminist Olive Logan’s

(1839-1909) piece for Town and Country that was printed in the Tribune on February 11, 1868.

Because of its resemblance to another account by a different author printed on April 11 the following year, I include Logan’s story here in full:

You remember, don’t you, Anonymous, for it is but a few years ago after all, when two ladies—a mother and a daughter—called on my sister Eliza, at the St. Nicholas Hotel, to consult her about a project they had in their heads? The project was for the younger lady to go upon the stage. My sister spoke in a disinterested manner to this young girl—told her all the haps and mishaps of stage life—spoke also of that unnecessary and unjust obloquy which is attached to the name of every actress, and then bade her go back and ponder seriously. She went back, with her mother, and both pondered seriously. They pondered on the fact that the young girl must do something for self-sustenance. They pondered on the limited field of employment which is open to women. They pondered on the emoluments and the delights of being a seamstress, or a shop girl, or a worker on a sewing-machine. They pondered on the scope afforded the daughter’s genius by these employments; and pondering, they decided. The young girl went upon the stage. She made a failure. A dire, desperate, seemingly hopeless failure. But she remembered that many a great genius has failed at first, only to triumph at last. There was a plucky spirit in the girl’s heart, and she did not turn to the sewing-machine as a last resort. Retiring again to private life, she began to labor at art as no galley-slave ever labored at the work to which he was sentenced. Her days and her nights were given to the worship of the goddess she loved; and on her reappearance on the stage, she was tolerably, if not brilliantly, successful. Her great virtue was that she did not consider herself perfect; but day after day, and night after night, she kept up that unceasing toil which has now made her, sir, one of the most celebrated women of the age and the only pure-blood prima donna assoluta of whom America can boast. Now, Anonymous, is it not evident that Clara Louise Kellogg would have done a wrong to herself and to her country if she had refrained from going on the stage?63

The writer Olive Logan credits her sister, actress Eliza Logan (1837-1904), for advising Clara

Louise Kellogg and her mother at the outset of the singer’s career. She calls attention to the

63 “An Episode in the Life of Clara Louise Kellogg,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1868, ProQuest. Olive Logan was called “The Ristori of the Lecture Field” (ostensibly referring to the Italian actress Adelaide Ristori) in an announcement of her upcoming lecture “Paris—City of Luxury” at Chicago’s Farwell Hall printed in the Tribune on February 4, 1869. 73 limited careers available to women at the time and states that Kellogg would have had to work in any case; this statement is hard to verify, but may serve to call attention to the feminist cause as well as justify Kellogg’s pursuit of a life on the stage. Logan’s telling of the story this way perhaps worked against societal notions that a woman in a dramatic profession was morally suspect because of her public role and close contact with men, as Kristin Turner expressed in her article about Emma Juch.64 She also uses the language of genius in a way that is reminiscent of how German composers such as Beethoven were described in the early and mid-nineteenth century. At the end of the article, Logan appeals to a sense of national pride in Kellogg as one of

America’s only famous prima donnas up to that point.

An article printed in the Tribune the next year, on April 11, 1869, contains many of the same story elements. As in the above article, Kellogg and her mother visited Eliza Logan, who was an actress; Logan advised them to consider the difficulties of a dramatic career for a woman;

Kellogg had to choose a career path so she chose to sing; she failed at first but worked very hard to improve her voice and eventually succeeded. This story also contains some added (and colorful) details: Kellogg “sang when a very small child”; she had a very ordinary voice when she was a young teen; “Her parents were poor”; her mother cured people of diseases as a

“spiritual physician” known in “the healing art”; one of her mother’s “fashionable” patients recommended Clara to Eliza Logan; Clara had “constant visions” of when she would become

“the central figure of the lyric stage”; and her educational expenses were paid by Colonel H.G.

Stebbins, who also helped her make social connections.65

64 Turner, 223. 65 “Personal Sketches. Clara Louise Kellogg,” Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1869, ProQuest. 74

Both of the above accounts clash in some ways with a more matter-of-fact one printed in the “Amusements” column of the Tribune on February 2, 1869, which gives only the following information about Kellogg’s background:

Miss Kellogg was born in Charleston, S.C., of Connecticut parentage, and gave indications of musical genius at a very early age. She commenced her musical education by studying the pianoforte, but her parents, finding that she gave promise of rare vocal powers, placed her under the instruction of Professor Milet, of the Paris Conservatory, from whom she was transferred to an Italian teacher, who in turn gave place to M. Riznire, with whom she studied for three years. Her final instructor was M. Muzio, well known here, under whose auspices she made her debut in opera at the New York Academy in 1861, in the role of Gilda in Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto.’ She at once won the favor of the public, and her success was unequivocal. She appeared thenceforth every consecutive season, and soon was universally acknowledged as the leading purely American prima donna.66

In this account, there is no mention of poverty, the limited occupations available for women, or the Logans, and her parents are credited as the ones who saw their daughter’s talent and enrolled her in music lessons. Kellogg is also said to have studied piano, which was a very common pursuit for girls and young women in the mid-nineteenth century. While it largely differs from the other two narratives, this account is like the first one in that it lauds Kellogg for being one of the first American prima donnas to have an international career. It also matches most closely

Kellogg’s own account of her upbringing.

Comments about Kellogg’s success as a source for national pride were ubiquitous in

Tribune articles between 1860 and 1876. An article about Kellogg’s success in London by a writer at the London Times, printed in the Chicago Tribune on November 21, 1867, clarified that

Kellogg was seen as American while Adelina Patti was not, or not fully:

America has already sent us two adopted art children in Madame Angiolina Bosio and Mdlle Adelina Patti… the latter still at the prime of youth and vigor of talent, seems just as likely to play truant [from the US]. In Mlle. Kellogg, however, our cousins have intrusted [sic] to us an absolute daughter of their own, an American born and bred, and in

66 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1869, ProQuest. Kellogg’s teacher Emanuele Muzio was also known as the teacher of Carlotta Patti, sister of Adelina Patti and a famous prima donna in her own right. 75

whose honorable successes they are entitled to take a more immediate and livelier interest, on which account alone it is pleasant for us to be able to congratulate them upon the result of Saturday’s essay.67

Thus even a European writer expected Americans to take an “immediate and livelier interest” in

Kellogg because she was viewed as fully American, in line with nationalist thinking of the time.

Many American writers clearly did take such an interest in Kellogg’s success. Similar sentiments about Kellogg as “an American singer born and educated among us” (who was again contrasted with Patti in this regard) were expressed by the writer of a February 4, 1873 article about the Italian opera season. The author then turns this reasoning into an argument for why

Chicago audiences should support Kellogg in her financial rivalry with the favored Austrian soprano Pauline Lucca. The writer argues that audiences should attend Kellogg’s opera nights and help her raise her receipts to more closely approximate the high earnings of Lucca, for

“Lucca remains in this country but a few months, and then goes back to Europe. Her success adds nothing to the national musical credit. Kellogg will always be with us, and whatever success she obtains, whether at home or abroad, adds so much to American musical reputation.”68 As the search for an American musical identity was a common topic of discussion in the nineteenth century, critics championed those Americans like Kellogg who could succeed in European musical centers and bring their internationally-recognized talents back to this country. Additionally, according to ethnomusicologist Katie Graber, while American writers searched for a new American music (featuring composers and performers born in the United

States), they simultaneously excluded European immigrant musicians from being part of the national tradition.69 This explains why Kellogg was heralded as America’s musical

67 “Miss Kellogg in London,” Chicago Tribune, November 21, 1867, ProQuest. 68 “Italian Opera,” Chicago Tribune, February 4, 1873, ProQuest. 69 Katie Graber, “American Dreams: Opera and Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Chicago” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2010). 76 representative while Patti was not, despite the fact that both initially rose to fame and gained places among the best opera singers in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century.

Her Character

As with Patti, Clara Louise Kellogg had to face popular conceptions in journalism about prima donnas that painted them as either greedy and difficult or beneficent and angelic. As the last three stories about her background mentioned above show, however, journalism about Clara

Louise Kellogg’s character in the Tribune often tended to emphasize positive attributes.

Kellogg’s “unsullied character” was mentioned in an April 15, 1865 article by the Tribune’s

New York correspondent “Vidi,” who also noted that when the New York Herald wrote an editorial “flinging out some hints highly scandalous in regard to her character,” people quickly counteracted these rumors and “the entire press of the city took up her defense.”70 Another endorsement of Kellogg’s upstanding reputation is found in the “Amusements” column from

February 2, 1869, in which the critic writes:

She is a lady of irreproachable character, and of the highest social position, and always maintains the strictest decorum in her relations with those around her. She goes everywhere under the escort of her mother, who always accompanies her to the opera or concert; has been a witness of all her triumphs, and has aided much to secure those triumphs by her own excellent advice and managerial talent.71

Here, Kellogg is praised for the propriety of her behavior, which includes traveling with her mother so as not to go unaccompanied on her opera tours, which would be considered inappropriate for an unmarried young woman at the time.72 Kellogg was also known for her dedication to her career, as the author of an article titled “The Opera Season” on January 9, 1876

70 Vidi, “New York Correspondence,” Chicago Tribune, April 15, 1865, ProQuest. 71 “Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1869, ProQuest. 72 Kellogg writes in her memoir that her mother disliked the theatre, having come from a very puritanical background, and sought to protect her daughter from associating too closely with other singers or sacrificing the enjoyment of her youth to her work. In retrospect, Kellogg expresses regret that she missed out on social connections and opportunities to become more independent because of her mother’s protective attitude; she also writes that she did not feel she missed out on childhood happiness. Kellogg, Memoirs, 22-32. 77 indicates when discussing the success of Kellogg’s English Opera Company (a part of her career which I will discuss in more detail below):

[N]o one will deny her the credit of being a lady who has commanded the highest respect and esteem, and whose reputation has never had a shadow upon it in her long connection with the profession, and an artist who has worked her way up to the head of our American vocalists by legitimate means, hard study, and conscientious effort.73

As did the writers of the biographical articles about Kellogg printed in the Tribune, this journalist expresses a view of Kellogg as someone who studied and made a strong effort in order accomplish her goals and build a career, eventually even forming her own opera company.

Other newspaper articles to shine a positive light on Kellogg’s character were those listing her participation in philanthropic activities. Some of these actions chronicled by journalists in the Tribune were Kellogg’s appearance in charity concerts and opera performances;74 her visit to sing at a state asylum;75 and the assistance she provided to help soprano Emma Abbott (1850-1891) find a teacher, employment, and housing in New York City at the beginning of her career.76

One account that reveals another way journalists thought about Kellogg’s generosity and other positive qualities comes from the New York correspondent of the Boston Saturday Evening

Gazette in an 1875 article titled “Singers’ Finances.” This writer states:

Miss Kellogg is worth probably $200,000 well invested, and would be worth more if she were not so generous. She, or her mother, who acts for her, is close at a bargain, but liberal with the money after she once gets it.77

73 “The Opera Season,” Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1876, ProQuest. 74 Information on Kellogg’s philanthropic performances can be found in the articles “Review of Amusements” on March 22, 1874; “Amusements” on October 19, 1874; “Musical Gossip: Personal” on February 14, 1875; and “Abroad” on April 9, 1876 (Chicago Tribune, ProQuest). 75 “The Power of Music—Clara Louise Kellogg in the Utica Insane Asylum,” Chicago Tribune, May 18, 1870, ProQuest. 76 Several articles in the paper contain information about Kellogg helping Emma Abbott begin her career: these include “A New Musical Star” on March 1, 1872; “The Stage Elsewhere” on March 10, 1872; “Music” on March 14, 1875; and “Abroad” on July 30, 1876 (Chicago Tribune, ProQuest). 77 “Musical Miscellany,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1875, ProQuest. $200,000 in 1875 is equivalent to about $4.9 million in 2020. “WolframAlpha.com.” 78

In direct contrast with this description of Kellogg and her mother as both thrifty and generous, however, the following (less flattering) description of Patti comes immediately afterwards:

Adelina Patti is extravagant and avaricious too. She makes a great deal of money, and spends a great deal as well. But she has saved a fortune.78

Whether the writer actually knew the truths of these singers’ income and expenses is uncertain. It is clear, though, that this account of Kellogg’s prudent financial habits aligned with American cultural values around the use of money, whereas the description of Adelina Patti as an

“avaricious” person who “spends a great deal” did not align with such values and was applied to someone of foreign background.

Katherine Preston describes a similar contrast in the way one critic praised Kellogg’s financial actions and critiqued the actions of other singers. She notes that after praising Kellogg’s success with her English Opera Company, the critic wrote in the same article that the sopranos concurrently singing Italian-language opera, Christine Nilsson (who was Swedish) and Pauline

Lucca (who was German), were “floundering” as they attempted to attract audiences to their more expensive performances. Preston comments:

Such sentiments reflect American nationalism, since practicality, levelheadedness, and business success (especially in contrast with the ‘floundering’ activities of foreigners) were all admired as typical American characteristics.79

Regarding the positive description of Kellogg and the negative description of Nilsson and Lucca,

Preston writes:

[S]uch expressions of nationalism, which increased in the mid- and late 1870s, could also be manifestations of xenophobia, which was growing in response to unbridled immigration from Europe and Asia and a widespread belief that Europeans were responsible for the Panic [the Panic of 1873, a financial downturn] and depression.80

78 “Musical Miscellany,” Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1875, ProQuest.” 79 Preston, Opera for the People, 195. 80 Preston, Opera for the People, 195. 79

Thus, while critics praised the American soprano Kellogg for being practical and a good businesswoman, they sometimes censured European singers for supposedly having the opposite qualities. In such cases, xenophobia towards Europeans mingled with other existing stereotypes surrounding prima donnas to intensify critiques of foreign singers’ financial habits.

Her Finances

Much of the journalism about Kellogg’s finances in the Tribune centered around the receipts from her performances or her contracts with managers. Sometimes contracts were broken, and the paper included articles about two cases in which Kellogg refused to sing because payment was not guaranteed. One such occasion was the festival for the June 1870 Beethoven

Centennial in New York, the story of which was reprinted via the correspondent of the San

Francisco Bulletin. The celebration was organized by conductor and festival enthusiast Patrick

Sarsfield Gilmore, but unlike his other more successful festivals it was evidently “started with only a fortnight’s notice, and the details were far from complete when the first day of the festival arrived.”81 Several prominent artists were engaged and the festival started, but especially on the third day and after, the performances became more and more disordered when several of the people involved in putting on the event went on wage strikes: the printers of the programs, the artillery who were meant to shoot their guns for extra effect, the anvil players whom Gilmore had hired, and the opera singers. The journalist writes that the Saturday evening concert ran extremely late because the chorus, band, and orchestra arrived late, and then singers Euphrosyne

81 “The New York Festival Failure,” Chicago Tribune, June 24, 1870, ProQuest. 80

Parepa-Rosa, Kellogg, Brignoli, Caroline Richings, Zelda Seguin, and others all refused to perform until they were issued their checks backstage, causing further delays one after another.82

A second, and less dramatic, account of Kellogg refusing to sing because of a precarious contract was also reprinted from the San Francisco Chronicle on December 4, 1870. In this case,

Kellogg had formed a contract with the manager of the California Theatre, Signor Bianchi, to appear in San Francisco later that month. When advance ticket sales raised only $8,000, however, making it impossible for Bianchi to send the $10,000 payment she was expecting, she telegraphed that she would not travel West unless she was paid.83 The journalist described the difficult situation Kellogg found herself in, saying that Bianchi used the telegraph to “prevail on

Miss Kellogg to take the cash on hand and trust to Providence and luck for the balance of her money when she could reach San Francisco,” while also expressing the hope that she would in the end come to sing in that city.84

Discussions of Kellogg’s finances in the Tribune took on an especially urgent character during the operatic season (which actually included several short seasons) of 1872-1873. Kellogg came to Chicago with the Italian opera company managed by Max Maretzek for two short seasons early in 1873, and she generally alternated performance nights with Pauline Lucca, a soprano from Berlin, except when they would perform together in certain operas. The two sopranos did not find their audiences to be of equal sizes, and in a February 4, 1873 article titled

“Italian Opera,” an unnamed writer for the Tribune stated frankly: “It is useless to disguise the fact that the sales of seats for the Lucca nights have been largely in excess of the Kellogg

82 “The New York Festival Failure,” Chicago Tribune, June 24, 1870, ProQuest. 83 Adjusting these currency amounts for inflation, $8,000 in 1870 is about $166,200 in 2020; $10,000 in 1870 is about $207,700 in 2020. “WolframAlpha.com.” 84 Operatic Troubles—Clara Louise Kellogg Declines Going to California,” Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1870, ProQuest. 81 nights.”85 Just how large these discrepancies were became clear in the February 16, 1873

“Review of Amusements,” where the receipts for each performance between February 3 and

February 15 were given: Kellogg’s ticket receipts ranged from $200 to $1,700, whereas Lucca’s ranged from $3,400 to $5,400, with receipts for their combined performances (in Don Giovanni,

Mignon given twice, and The Marriage of Figaro) ranging from $4,200 to $6,300.86 One reason for the slant against Kellogg, according to an interview between impresario Max Maretzek and one of the Tribune’s reporters (possibly Upton) printed on February 15, 1873, was that the company’s advance agent and Lucca’s business manager, a Mr. Jarrett from London, drew up her contract to specify that only she would sing certain roles in operas during their tour (roles which were typically Kellogg’s specialties), whereas Kellogg’s contract had no such specifications. Maretzek also accuses Jarrett of using his social connections to manipulate the

New York newspapers in ways that highlighted Lucca and disparaged Kellogg, saying in the interview:

Instead of working for the interests of the company, as he [Jarrett] should have done, he tried to influence the press and public in favor of those in whom he was interested, to the detriment of others. I need not specify; you known what I mean. What was injurious to any member of the company was injurious to me.87

Maretzek went on to say that he did not blame either of the prima donnas for the conflict that arose between them, and there was even “the best of feeling between the two ladies;” instead, he entirely blamed the “very meddlesome” Jarrett, and took responsibility on his own part for

85 “Italian Opera,” Chicago Tribune, February 4, 1873, ProQuest. 86 “Review of Amusements,” Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1873, ProQuest. Adjusting for inflation from 1873 to 2020, the ticket receipts are roughly equivalent to these amounts in 2020 U.S. dollars: $4,530-$38,500 for Kellogg’s nights; $77,000-$122,300 for Lucca’s nights; and $95,130-$142,700 for their combined nights. It is interesting to compare these amounts to Patti’s standard earnings per performance as mentioned in her contract above (10,000 francs), which were roughly equivalent to $2,140 in 1874 and $50,930 in 2020. “WolframAlpha.com” and “Historicalstatistics.org.” 87 “Behind the Curtain,” Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1873, ProQuest. 82 agreeing to work with this man who was “continually bent on making mischief” in the first place.88

Katherine Preston explores the reasons behind the discrepancy in audience attendance for

Kellogg and Lucca’s 1873 performances in the first chapter of her book Opera for the People.89

She writes that Kellogg also tells in her memoirs of the Lucca contract which prevented Kellogg from playing her most famous role (Marguerite in Faust) during these seasons, as well as

Jarrett’s interference with the press (though Preston acknowledges that these memoirs only tell

Kellogg’s side of the story).90 Additionally, Preston notes that Chicago critics blamed the high prices of tickets for the differences in audience sizes, because if listeners could only go to one night, they would pick a Lucca night.91 Another factor was the preference among Americans for foreign opera singers; as Preston puts it, “Kellogg could not compete with the éclat that surrounded European celebrities.”92

After this difficult season, Maretzek did not ask Kellogg to join his company for the next year (1873-1874), and neither did Maurice Strakosch, the other leading player in Italian opera.

Preston writes that Kellogg’s “experience with this [Maretzek] troupe explains her decision to move in an entirely new direction,” namely, becoming the artistic director and leading woman in her own English-language opera company.93 English-language opera, which had been popular at midcentury but saw a decline in the 1860s, had recently gained popularity thanks to the companies of Caroline Richings and Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa. Kellogg’s English Opera

Company would turn out to be quite successful in this realm; Preston calls it the “most important

88 “Behind the Curtain,” Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1873, ProQuest. 89 Katherine Preston, Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 90 Preston, 57. 91 Preston, 57. 92 Preston, 55-56. 93 Preston, 57. 83

English-language company of the mid-1870s.”94 Because the company employed mostly

American singers, and avoided paying the high fees of European stars, they were able to charge lower ticket prices than the Italian opera companies: they charged 75 cents for gallery seats, $1 for general admission, and $2 for reserved seats, whereas Maretzek had charged $4 per individual performance or $14 for season tickets to five performances.95 After the Panic of 1873 caused a major economic downturn, Italian opera was increasingly viewed as too expensive and elitist, whereas English-language opera became even more popular. Preston writes that, “During the depression, in fact, the growing disenchantment of middle-class Americans with Italian opera facilitated both a resurgence in the popularity of English-language opera and a solidification of the identity of opera in Italian as an exclusive pastime (a long-term goal of wealthy

Americans).”96

Nearly all of these changes in favor of English opera which Preston mentions are echoed in an unattributed article titled “The Opera Season” published in the Tribune on December 7,

1873. The author of this article writes:

Some four or five years since, The Tribune advised Miss Kellogg to embark her fortunes in English opera, and quit the Italian stage, which had already commenced to show signs of decadence. We believed then, and believe now, that there is a prosperous future in store for English opera. Italian opera, at the best, is an expensive luxury. As at present managed (and we see no indications of a change in the style of management), it is impossible to organize a troupe with more than two or three first-rate artists in it. The rest must be mere makeweights. The result is that the operas must be performed very imperfectly, with excellence in two or three roles, and mediocrity, or even worse than that, in the remainder; and, even under these discouraging conditions, the prices must necessarily be very high to leave any margin of profits. English opera, on the other hand, is inexpensive as compared with the Italian, and can be put upon the stage with more

94 Preston, 183. 95 Preston, 188. Adjusting for inflation, Kellogg’s prices in 1873 are approximately equivalent to $17 for gallery seats, $23 for general admission, and $45 for reserved seats in 2020 U.S. dollars. Maretzek’s prices are approximately equivalent to $90 per individual performance and $317 for five performances (which, divided by five, is about $63 per performance) in 2020 U.S. dollars. “WolframAlpha.com.” 96 Preston, 157. 84

even excellence; and the day is not far distant when it will be so handled that even the operas of the Italian stage may be produced in a very creditable way.97

Acknowledging the increasing quality of English opera, which was coupled with its affordability due to the ability to hire relatively inexpensive performers, this critic goes on to explicitly commend the progress of Kellogg and her company, writing, “Miss Kellogg, therefore, in adopting the English stage, has a bright outlook before her.”98

Thus pragmatic financial concerns were involved in the popular concepts of foreign- language opera as an elite entertainment and English-language opera as suitable for the common person. This issue also had nationalist undertones: English-language opera was sometimes seen as a promising genre in the United States because it was one in which Americans could compose new works in their native language, whereas foreign-language opera was generally an imported art. Clara Louise Kellogg’s upbringing in the United States made her a favorite performer of

English opera, but she was also portrayed as a symbol of American achievement in the realm of foreign-language opera. As we saw with journalism about Adelina Patti, the five thematic areas considered above were actually quite intermixed in music criticism, and one can only go so far in considering one of these areas before the others come into play.

97 “The Opera Season,” Chicago Tribune, December 7, 1873, ProQuest. 98 “The Opera Season,” Chicago Tribune, December 7, 1873, ProQuest. 85

CHAPTER IV. CONCLUSION

Journalism about Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg in the Chicago Tribune during the years 1860-1876 reveals many interesting points of contrast in the trajectories of these singers’ lives and in how critics wrote about them. The two women’s careers differed from their very beginnings. Adelina Patti was a child prodigy who came from a family of professional musicians with international roots and began performing publicly in the 1850s, starting from the age of seven. Clara Louise Kellogg, on the other hand, came from a family that had been living in the United States for generations and did not appear to contain any professional musicians, and she did not begin performing publicly until the early 1860s, when she was in her late teens.

Journalists tended to describe Kellogg’s rise to fame as the result of her hard work, her perseverance through setbacks, her pursuit of opera as a profession in order to support herself, and the generous actions of socially prominent citizens who helped her along the way. Some writers published in the Tribune even suggested that Kellogg had little to no vocal talent as a girl, but it was only through practice that she learned to sing, suggesting that she did not fit the criteria for nineteenth-century notions of musical genius. Other journalists wrote that Kellogg had a gift for singing recognized from her youth, which would align her more with ideas of genius and natural musical ability.

Though Adelina Patti’s career started before 1860 and thus was outside of the period of journalism I considered, critics often wrote about the ways in which her voice had developed since her childhood and youth, presenting her as a child prodigy who continued to establish herself in the field of opera as an adult. This idea of Patti as a prodigy with innate ability connects to notions of genius in the nineteenth century. Based on my reading of criticism in the

Tribune, critics did not appear to mention hard work with any frequency in Patti’s case. In fact, 86 in his book Musical Memories, George P. Upton describes Patti’s early training as a process of her effortlessly absorbing roles as she watched her family members rehearse and perform over her childhood years; Upton writes that even as a child Adelina Patti was eager to emulate her mother (who was also an operatic soprano) by singing her operatic parts.1 In Musical Memories as well as the early newspaper accounts of Patti’s concerts in Chicago, it was generally acknowledged that she had a remarkable voice even as a young girl.2 These types of stories about

Patti’s precocious absorption of operatic roles can be seen to perpetuate the myth that learning and performing music came naturally to child prodigies, who were seen as having an innate artistic genius and as a result did not have to work as hard as other musicians.

These differences in journalism surrounding the two singers’ beginnings would continue to resonate in articles about them as adults, and the patterns traceable in this body of criticism reflect wider societal currents and ideas. One such current was the idea of nationalism and how it intersected with classical music, or how American writers thought about the state of classical music in the United States versus the state of classical music in Europe. Journalists described

Adelina Patti as American in some accounts from the 1860s, but in many other articles they described her as mostly European because of her birthplace in Spain, her family’s Italian background, and her successful career during the 1860s and 1870s in operatic centers such as

London, Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg—all this despite the fact that she lived in New York

City from her infancy until she began her operatic career there in the late 1850s. In contrast,

Clara Louise Kellogg grew up in South Carolina, Connecticut, and New York, and critics promoted her enthusiastically as an American who succeeded in the overwhelmingly European

1 Upton, Musical Memories, 37. 2 Upton, Musical Memories, 35-36. 87 field of operatic sopranos. Thus, debates over musical nationalism in the nineteenth century occurred not only in the arena of composers, but also in discourse about performers.

Kellogg began her career singing mostly opera in Italian, French, and German, but in

1873 she started her own company and began singing opera in English (including some of the same repertoire she had sung before translated into English as well as works originally written in

English). During the 1870s, the popularity, attendance, and financial success of English-language opera grew in the United States, and some critics championed it as a field that would allow for the development of an authentically American classical music. These writers argued that operas composed in Europe and performed in the United States were not truly “American” (especially if they were not written in English), but the public’s growing appetite for opera in English would create a demand for new works that American composers should begin to supply.3 The idea expressed by journalists of Clara Louise Kellogg representing the United States in the realm of opera, then, intersected with American writers’ ideas about the relationship between opera (and perhaps, by extension, other classical genres) in European countries versus in the United States.

Both Patti and Kellogg were subjected to the watchful eye of the press when it came to their personal lives, and comments about their actions offstage reveal how the press actively worked to shape their public personas. Critics often described the two singers’ appearances, both when they were performing and when they were not, and in implicit or explicit ways suggested how readers could emulate these celebrities in their own fashion choices. Both women were falsely rumored to be engaged in the papers, and comments attributed to Clara Louise Kellogg reflect the intense pressure that members of the press exerted to learn about any developments in the area of marriage, even if Kellogg adamantly refuted journalists’ speculations. Coverage of

3 One person who espoused this opinion was the critic Henry Watson. Preston, Opera for the People, 196. 88

Adelina Patti’s 1868 marriage to the Marquis de Caux in the Tribune included descriptions of her husband’s financial habits and suggested that these habits eventually created relational conflict between the couple. Journalists’ writings about Patti’s marriage also show the relatively low amount of control women were officially granted over their own finances in the late nineteenth century, as Patti was consistently represented financially and legally by male relatives, friends, and agents. In this vein, it is notable that journalism about Clara Louise Kellogg indicates her mother handled the singers’ finances in some cases, though the (male) business manager C.D.

Hess was in charge of the financial leadership of the Kellogg English Opera Company, with

Kellogg serving as its artistic director. Another area in which the newspapers dealt with singers’ finances was philanthropy; journalists often reported Patti and Kellogg singing in concerts whose proceeds went to philanthropic causes and giving to charitable causes. These types of philanthropy were common among women of Kellogg’s and Patti’s time, and especially as Patti and Kellogg were women with considerable discretionary income, newspaper accounts of philanthropy helped to bolster their public images.

Although the scope of my study was limited to journalism about two prima donnas in a single publication and for a period of sixteen years, the conclusions drawn connect to overarching topics in the cultural history of nineteenth-century American music. Focusing on these particular years in Chicago was interesting to me because of the events that took place during this time and their effects on the ways journalists wrote about the city’s development.

Because it was founded in the 1830s and also experienced heavy losses in the fire of 1871, the people of Chicago were especially eager to “catch up” with Eastern cities and prove their city to be one of the country’s cultural centers by cultivating the performance of opera and other classical music. Journalists frequently promoted classical music as a cause for civic pride in 89 newspapers like the Tribune. With that said, there is also much to learn about musical performance in other American cities during this time period, one in which not only Chicago’s population but the population of the United States was rapidly growing.

Newspaper coverage of operatic celebrities such as Adelina Patti and Clara Louise

Kellogg in the Chicago Tribune foreshadows the further development of mass media and celebrity culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Before the widespread availability of photographs, recordings, and radio, journalists provided interested readers with colorful portraits of these musical celebrities by frequently printing updates of their whereabouts, reviews of their performances, descriptions of their outfits, and countless other tidbits including statements about who these artists were as people. As George P. Upton puts it at the end of his book Musical

Memories,

In these “Memories” my readers have been acquainted with all the great artists who have visited Chicago and some who have not, with their triumphs and failures, their habits, peculiarities, jealousies, and quarrels, for artists are human, sometimes very human.4

While Patti and Kellogg were the objects of intense media attention and sometimes appeared larger than life in the newspapers, they were in the end human—and so were their critics.

Journalists’ ideas about musical genius, American nationalism, societal expectations for women, and how to present celebrities to the public are revealed in the ways they wrote about these two prima donnas. In this way, examining these journalists’ writing shows how they used the lenses of nineteenth-century America to observe the light of these bright musical stars.

4 Upton, Musical Memories, 318. 90

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DISCOGRAPHY

Patti, Adelina, soprano, Alfredo Barilli, pianist, and Landon Ronald, pianist. Spotify. Tracks 6, 19, 20, 24, 35, and 36 on The Era of Adelina Patti. Recorded 1905, 1906. Nimbus Records NI 7840/41. Originally released in 1993.

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APPENDIX A. ICONOGRAPHY

Figure 1. “Adelina Patti. Four Portraits.” In Upton, Musical Memories, 36.

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Figure 2. Silvy, Camille. “Adelina Patti as Rosina in ‘The Barber of Seville.’” National Portrait Gallery, London, 1861. Accessed August 18, 2020. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw14621/Adelina-Patti-as-Rosina-in- The-Barber-of- Seville?LinkID=mp08115&sort=dateAsc&search=sas&sText=camille+silvy&OConly=tr ue&displayStyle=thumb&role=art&wPage=16&rNo=337.

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Figure 3. Silvy, Camille. “Adelina Patti in Costume for Six Different Roles.” National Portrait Gallery, London, 1866. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw144809/Adelina-Patti-in-costume- for-six-different-roles.

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Figure 4. Ashford Brothers & Co, after Camille Silvy. “Adelina Patti as Violetta in ‘La Traviata’; as Lucia in ‘Lucia de Lammermoor’; as herself; as Martha in ‘Martha’; as Zerlina in ‘Don Juan.’” National Portrait Gallery, London, circa 1861. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw257493/Adelina-Patti-as-Violetta- in-La-Traviata-as-Lucia-in-Lucia-de-Lammermoor-as-herself-as-Martha-in-Martha-as- Zerlina-in-Don-Juan?LinkID=mp03470&role=sit&rNo=11.

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Figure 5. “Clara Louise Kellogg in ‘La Traviata.’” Upton, Musical Memories, 106.

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Figure 6. Black & Case. “Clara Louise Kellogg as Figlia [in Donizetti’s La Figlia del Reggimento].” In Memoirs of an American Prima Donna by Clara Louise Kellogg (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913), 56. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38023/38023- h/38023-h.htm#page_056.

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Figure 7. Elliott & Fry. “Clara Louise Kellogg as Lucia [in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor].” In Memoirs by Clara Louise Kellogg, 72.

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Figure 8. Turner. “Clara Louise Kellogg as Martha [in Flotow’s Martha].” In Memoirs by Clara Louise Kellogg, 74.

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Figure 9. Sarony. “Clara Louise Kellogg as Marguerite [in Gounod’s Faust], 1865.” In Memoirs by Clara Louise Kellogg, 82.

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Figure 10. Stereoscopic Co. “Clara Louise Kellogg as Linda [in Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix], 1868.” In Memoirs by Clara Louise Kellogg, 134.

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APPENDIX B. THE UPTON SCRAPBOOKS (NEWBERRY LIBRARY, CHICAGO)

Figure 11. Photograph of an advertisement for Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor featuring Clara Louise Kellogg at Crosby’s Opera House in April, 1865. In [Scrapbooks of Programs of Chicago Concerts During the Years 1860-1876], compiled by George P. Upton and Karleton Spalding Hackett. Chicago, 1861. Access provided by the Newberry Library. Photo taken by the author, January 2020.

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Figure 12. Partial photograph of an advertisement for a concert at Bryan Hall featuring Carlotta Patti in December, 1862. In [Scrapbooks], compiled by Upton and Hackett, 1861. Access provided by the Newberry Library. Photo taken by the author, January 2020.