Frances Alda

Frances Alda photographed on board a passenger liner during the 1920s

Frances Alda relaxing away from the stage, 1909

Frances Alda (31 May 1879– 18 September 1952) was a New Zealand-born, Australian-raised operatic soprano. She achieved fame during the first three decades of the 20th century due to her outstanding singing voice, fine technique and colourful personality, as well as her frequent onstage partnerships at the New York Metropolitan Opera with Enrico Caruso.

Career

Alda was born Fanny Jane Davis in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1879. Her father David, wanted her mother, Leonore (née Simonsen), to settle down. But Leonore, a promising singer from a musical family, had other ideas and in September 1880 divorced her husband to resume her singing career. Fanny spent her early years traveling with her mother on her operatic tours. After false starts in Australasia, she took Fanny and her younger brother to San Francisco in 1883. Leonore Davis remarried but died of peritonitis in San Francisco on 29 December 1884, shortly after remarrying, to Herman Adler. After her mother's death, Alda was sent to live with her maternal grandparents, Martin and Fanny Simonsen, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

She sang in productions of Gilbert and Sullivan in Melbourne before leaving Australia for Europe at the age of 22 in order to undertake additional study and pursue an international singing career like her future soprano rival Nellie Melba. After receiving lessons in Paris from the renowned teacher Mathilde Marchesi, who gave her her stage name, Alda made her debut at the Opéra-Comique in 1904 in Massenet's Manon. She appeared at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1906, and at La Scala, Milan, during the 1906-08 seasons.

In 1908, the former La Scala impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza became director of the Metropolitan Opera, New York ("Met"). On 7 December 1908 Alda made her debut at the Met. On 4 April 1910, Alda and Gatti-Casazza married. According to American Art News (New York, 19 March 1910), Adolfo Müller-Ury was painting Alda just before her marriage. It was in New York that Alda furthered her career, appearing to acclaim in such famous operas as Martha, Manon Lescaut, Otello, Faust, Mefistofele and La bohème. She began recording for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1908 and several of her records became best-sellers. She created the title roles in Victor Herbert's Madeleine and Henry Hadley's Cleopatra's Night as well as Roxane in Walter Damrosch's Cyrano. She also sang regularly with Enrico Caruso.

Alda toured Australia and New Zealand in 1927. She and Gatti-Casazza separated the following year and then divorced. In 1929, she left the Met but continued to give concerts, make radio broadcasts and appear in vaudeville. Alda's 1937 autobiography was titled Men, Women, & Tenors. On 14 April 1941, at Charleston, South Carolina, she remarried, to New York advertising executive Ray Vir Den, a decade her junior. She would have an affluent retirement in Long Island, and traveling. She died of a stroke (some sources cite cerebral hemorrhage) on 18 September 1952 in Venice, Italy, aged 73.

External links

• Profile of Frances Alda, "New Zealand's most famous daughter"
• Melba versus Alda
• Madame Frances Alda. Does Not Seem to Like Australia
• Photo from the Library of Congress's George Grantham Bain Collection
• Caruso and Alda singing Verdi on YouTube
• Historical recording in 1912 with Caruso on YouTube
• Vitaphone Short Film, 1927 - Alda sings the Ave Maria from Verdi's Otello on YouTube
• Discography of Frances Alda on Victor Records from the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR)