Frances Alda
Frances Alda (actually: Fanny Jane Davis, born May 31, 1879 in Christchurch, † September 18, 1952 in Venice) was a New Zealand opera soprano. She gained notoriety for her outstanding singing voice, good technique and colorful personality in the first three decades of the 20th century. She went to New York's Metropolitan Opera often together with Enrico Caruso.
Childhood and youth
Fanny was born in 1879 in Christchurch. Her father wished that his wife Leonore born Simonsen should operate as a housewife and mother. Leonore had divorced as a promising talent for singing from a musical family other plans and settled in 1880 to record her singing career again. The next years were spent Fanny on tours of her mother. After failures in Australasia Leonore traveled with Fanny and her younger brother in 1883 to San Francisco, where he married again, but died in December 1884 peritonitis. After her mother's death Fanny lived with her maternal grandparents in Melbourne, Australia. She sang here in Gilbert and Sullivan. At the age of 22, she traveled to Europe to continue her studies and receive an international singing career as her later rival Nellie Melba. After lessons with Mathilde Marchesi in Paris, which also gave her the stage name, Alda made his debut in 1904 at the Opéra -Comique in Massenet's Manon. She joined in 1906 in London's Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and from 1906 to 1908 in Milan's La Scala on.
On April 4, 1910 Alda married the former impresario of La Scala, Giulio Gatti- Casazza, who had come in 1908 as director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. After the American Art News article the artist painted Adolfo Müller- Ury shortly before their wedding. In New York, she continued her career and performed in the opera Martha, Manon Lescaut, Otello, Faust, Mefistofele and La Bohème.
During this time she also sang for records of the Victor Talking Machine Company. She sang leading roles in Victor Herbert's Madeleine and Henry Hadley's Cleopatra 's Night, and Walter Damrosch Cyrano. She regularly sang with tenor Enrico Caruso.
Alda toured in 1927 to Australia and New Zealand. She and Gatti- Casazza separated in 1928 and eventually divorced. In 1929, she left the "Met", but gave further concerts, radio broadcasts made and performed in vaudeville. Her autobiography from 1937 called Men, Women, & tenor.
She married again in 1941 and traveled in the later years of her life much. She died at the age of 73 years in 1952 in Venice. Frances Alda was proud of her New Zealand origins and sang it on Māori.