Читать книгу Canadian Performing Arts Bundle - Michelle Labrèche-Larouche - Страница 13

1897. Albani was fifty years old, and it was Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, marking the sixtieth year of her reign. “My dear friend,” the monarch wrote to Emma, “we are greatly pleased: imagine that we were captured in the first moving pictures during our Jubilee Parade! It is very tiring for the eyes to view it, but such a marvel is certainly worth a headache.”

At the Gyes' home in Kensington, money no longer flowed as freely as it had in the past. Although Cornélia had increased the number of her piano pupils, Emma was obliged to go on tour in increasingly farflung corners of the world to earn enough to keep the family. She did not sign these touring contracts strictly for the income they would bring her; she wanted to feel that the great Albani was still appreciated – even though, by now, odd sounds would occasionally escape her throat.

In 1898, she toured South Africa and Australia for the first time.

The following year, she sang Lohengrin in England for the Queen, at Windsor Castle this time. Victoria, with her German background, had always been an avid Wagner fan. At the same time, Albani continued to give recitals while keeping up her career as an oratorio soloist.¹

The twentieth century ushered in a new generation of opera divas, some of whom flouted Victorian convention. Soprano Lina Cavalieri kissed Enrico Caruso on the lips in Giordano's Fedora² at the Met in New York, a theatrical touch that had never been seen before. Scottish soprano Mary Garden shocked audiences by her striptease during the “Dance of the Seven Veils” in Richard Strauss's Salome; some people said this was to be expected, as she was the soprano who had created that very strange opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, by the young French composer, Claude Debussy. It was an era of great innovation in opera, with startling works by Stravinsky, Janáček, and Prokofiev. It was all so very different from Bellini!

Mercifully, Queen Victoria did not live to witness the upheavals wrought by the changing times, and which resulted in the demise of most of the European monarchies. On January 23, 1901, newspaper headlines throughout the world starkly announced “The Queen Is Dead.” Victoria died at age eighty-two, after the longest and most glorious reign in the history of the British Empire.

Victoria's eldest son, now King Edward VII, requested that Emma Albani sing at the funeral ceremony, in compliance with his mother's express wishes.

The Queen lay in state at Windsor Castle. The catafalque was covered by the white roses that encircle the English crown. The Royal Family stood in vigil around it: the new King, his wife – now Queen Alexandra – and Victoria and Albert's other children and their families.

A petite woman dressed in black silk, a heavy mourning veil over her face, walked slowly forward as the organ played softly. She stopped before the casket. Her sweet, tender, and very sad voice lifted in song, rendering excerpts from Handel's Messiah, the hymns I Know that My Redeemer Liveth and Come unto Him. It was Albani's first posthumous tribute to her friend and her queen. Louis Fréchette composed a sonnet evoking that moment, entitled Albani before Queen Victoria's Coffin. Its final line reads: “Royalty, death, and genius blended their thrice-blessed majesty before God.”

Edward, his eyes filled with tears, thanked Albani for her beautiful farewell to his mother. The following year, he invited her to sing at his coronation; on that occasion, Queen Alexandra gave Emma a photograph of herself with a dedication, a much-treasured keepsake.

After Victoria's death, Emma felt bereft, in spite of the presence of her husband, her sister, and her son, who, although he now lived apart from his parents, had come home to be with his mother for the funeral. Albani had lost a protector and a loyal friend. She looked at the photographs that the monarch had given her. The first was of her coronation, the second of the jubilee, and the third, in a small silver and enamel case, was a miniature portrait of Victoria that Emma took with her everywhere. When she gave it to her, the Queen had said: “I hear that you always carry my photograph with you in your travels. This one will be more convenient for you.” Emma strove to shake off her melancholy, and taking her courage in both hands, she resumed her demanding schedule of singing engagements.

Thus, in the months of January and February, 1903, Albani returned to perform in Montreal. The critics were becoming less and less enthusiastic about her. The music critic of La Presse wrote: “Albani seems rather tired. Her voice no longer possesses that crystalline purity and that irreproachable justesse that constituted its principal charm.”

One consolation of the tour was that Emma was able to visit her father. Joseph Lajeunesse died in Chambly the following year at age eighty-three; his son, Adélard, Curé of St. Monique des Deux Montagnes, officiated at the funeral. Shortly afterwards, Emma learned that Ernest Frederick's hopes had been realized: he had been hired by the British Foreign Office.

Inveterate performer that she was, Emma recorded arias and songs for the phonograph, and set off on a tour of South Africa. Later, she would tour Australia, New Zealand, India, and Ceylon. Now in her late fifties, she was beginning to be exhausted by her frequent voyages.

Albani made her farewell tour of Canada in 1906. Cornélia, realizing that it might be the last time she would see her country, came along with her sister. Emma sang in Toronto, Ottawa, Sherbrooke, and Sorel. In Montreal, she sang in the Salle Ludger Duvernay of the Monument national³ and at the Mount Royal Arena. She appeared there with Éva Gauthier, a young Ottawa-born mezzo-soprano and a protégée of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Instrumentalists and choral singers completed the touring company.

Emma travelled by paddlewheeler from Montreal to Chambly, where she sang for the farmers and their families returning from market. It was an emotional moment, against the backdrop of the setting sun and the calm waters of the Richelieu River. In her home town, every visit by Emma Albani was an occasion for festivities, and every day she spent there comprised a veritable ritual. The diva would wake up at one o'clock in the afternoon and have breakfast in bed. At three o'clock, she would rise and don a satin and lace peignoir to receive her intimate friends. Towards the end of the afternoon, she would leave the house. Very elegantly dressed, with the lower half of her face covered by a black scarf to protect her throat, she would walk along the banks of the river.

In Ottawa, Governor General Earl Grey and Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier attended an Albani recital. Emma and Ernest were invited several times to the prime minister's residence.

One evening, as they returned to their hotel room, Emma asked her husband: “Don't you find it odd that in a conquered country, a French Canadian is prime minister and rallies the two peoples together?”

“My darling, this harmony is obviously due to the complete freedom given to the French by their English brothers, so that all live together as one large and happy family,” was Ernest's complacent reply.

“Nelly would say that the French Canadians have the large families and the English have all the power. Don't you think that's the case?”

“I think it's time you went to bed, my dear!”

The canopied bed was inviting, and the discussion ended there.

Ernest spent his days taking photographs with his Brownie camera. He was like a delighted little boy playing with a new toy. No more cumbersome glass plates, heavy camera body, and unwieldy tripod: the Kodak film was light and practical.

Emma found it much more difficult to leave her homeland this time; she felt as if she were leaving part of her heart there.

Back in London, Albani resumed her usual round of singing engagements, letter-writing, fittings at the dressmaker's, dinner out followed by the opera or the theatre. One such evening in 1906 was memorable: it was Adelina's Patti's farewell recital, after fifty-six years as a performer.

In a letter from the Canadian landscape painter Maurice Cullen, Emma learned that the Ouimetoscope, the first moving picture theatre in North America, had been inaugurated on January 1, 1906. “Sometimes, I leave my studio in the Rue Richelieu in Chambly to treat myself to an evening at the cinema in Montreal,” he wrote.

The years were passing quickly, and the soprano's voice showed signs of increasing deterioration. On October 14, 1911, Albani regretfully retired from an active career. Her farewell performance took place at the Albert Hall in London, to a full house that included Sir Arthur Sullivan, Matilde Marchesi, Adelina Patti, Nellie Melba, Emma Calvé, and numerous other notables of the opera world. Emotions ran high; thousands of Albani's fans wept as they listened to her sing Tosti's aria, Goodbye. When Emma finally left the stage after repeated ovations by her well-wishers, Cornélia was there to wipe her brow with her handkerchief; Ernest kissed her, and Ernest Frederick embraced his mother, who was trembling like a leaf. The next day's newspapers gave the event the respect Albani was due, reiterating the general opinion that “Madame Albani remains one of the most brilliant musical figures of the nineteenth century.”

Emma's nostalgic sadness that year was augmented by the unveiling of Victoria's great funeral monument. In his invitation to her to attend the ceremony, the King reminded Emma, “Her Majesty enjoyed your company very much, and loved your beautiful voice.”

Although the occasional newspaper article would mention that the retired opera star “was living quietly in her house in Kensington, giving the odd public recital for the aid of charity,” the hidden reality was more difficult. The bare fact was that money was short in the Gye household. Emma acted to replenish the coffers by writing her memoirs in collaboration with a young journalist, Harold Simpson. Forty Years of Song, published in London and Toronto in 1911, relates the singer's struggle for perfection and recognition, her rise to prominence, and her glory days at the top of her profession, combined with sketches of many of the great singers, conductors, and composers she had known during her career. Although it is invaluable as a personal chronicle of Albani's life, it reveals a failing memory; inaccuracies in dates and places mar the total effect.