Lina Cavalieri (1874-1944)

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Lina Cavalieri (1874-1944)

Natalina (Lina) Cavalieri was born in Viterbo, Latium, Italy on 25th December, 1874, the daughter of humble parents. Her father, Florindo Cavalieri was descended from a once noble family now fallen in circumstances who found work where he could - as a labourer, newspaper seller, and even household domestic. Her mother was a washer-woman.

Much of Lina's early life has been romanticised including accounts of time spent as an orphan in a convent from which she allegedly ran away with a travelling theatre troupe! In fact she was never orphaned as a child, but it was a hard life none-the-less. As the eldest of five children she was expected to help raise her siblings, and, as soon as she was old enough, to work to supplement the family income. She was sent to train as a seamstress, but lacking the talent or inclination for that profession turned instead to selling flowers in the streets of Rome and singing in front of rich houses.

A local music teacher heard her singing in this way and offered her a few free music lessons, which led in turn to Lina finding work in the cafe chantant (musical open air cafes) of Rome. Her pretty voice brought her immediate success in her new role and before long her considerable beauty caught the attention of a young army lieutenant who promised her a better life away from all her past tribulations - but his influential family intervened to break up their relationship by arranging his transfer to another City.

Still, Lina's life had already taken a considerable upturn, and before long she was singing on the playbill of the Concerto delle Varieta in Rome. Singing at ever grander establishments, her fees grew and she progressed from homemade dresses and second-hand shoes to buying her costumes first-hand from fashionable establishments. She was able to pay for further singing and dancing lessons and soon became one of the most popular entertainers in Rome.

Eventually, she made her way to Vienna where she sang at the famous Ronacher Theatre and earned a reputation as "the prettiest girl in Vienna." Around 1895, she arrived in Paris, singing and dancing the Tarantelle at the Folies-Bergere and buying her outfits from the famous milliners on the Rue de la Paix. Her great beauty made her the darling of the photographers and her photographs were distributed all over Europe.

In 1897 she found herself for the first time in England, singing the songs of her homeland at London's reknowned Empire Theatre. From there she went St. Petersburg in Russia, creating a sensation which cause that country to take her forever to it's heart and be the scene of some of her greatest successes.

Her career then took a sudden change in direction. In Paris she had met, and fallen in love with, Prince Alexander Baratinski, scion of a rich Russian family and young man about town. Baratinski eventually convinced Lina that she was wasting herself on the music hall stage and that her true future lay in grand opera. Consequently, she retired from variety and the music halls and began cultivating her voice under the tuition of Madame Marchesi in Paris and later Madame Mariani-Masi in Milan.

Three years of hard work and sacrifice later she was ready to make her grand opera debut and the chance came at no less a musical center than the Theatre Royal in Lisbon where she was engaged to sing Nedda in "Pagliacci." Unfortunately for Lina, the Lisbon public was very demanding and gave little allowance for her inexperience. Nor did they appreciate the remainder of the production, and on the second night a riot in the theatre chased the performers from the stage.

It was a crushing failure for Lina, made worse that Baratinski, her constant companion of three years, chose that moment to abandon her, fleeing to his private yacht whilst she disconsolately caught the Sud Express train back to Paris. From that point on they went their seperate ways, and she rarely saw him again. Whether Lina and Baratinski were ever actually married is uncertain - she claimed there had been a ceremony, he refuted it - what is certain, however, is that he left her with a son, Alexandre.

Broken and abandoned, it might have been the end of Lina's operatic career had not her dedicated sister, Ada, intervened. Ada, who was every bit as beautiful as Lina and three years her junior, had been trained and educated for a governess and after some trials and tribulations had eventually found gainful employment with a good house in Genoa. But she had always closely followed Lina's career and, knowing her sister to be at her lowest ebb, she unhesitatingly gave up her position and rushed to Lina's aid, persuading her, after several days of arguments, not to give up on her operatic ambitions.

With her sister firmly behind her, Lina persevered and within twelve months she was singing at no less an opera house than the San Carlo in Naples! Next she secured a brilliant engagement for an entire season at the Imperial Theater in Warsaw, where she erased the memory of the Lisbon debacle by scoring a particular success as Nedda. Success followed upon success and in the following years she sang at the Theatre of Ravenna, the Grand Theatre of Palermo, the Opera of St. Petersburg, and the world reknowned Casino-Theatre at Monte Carlo. Her own country of Italy took her firmly to it's heart, as did Russia where she was all the rage.

Financially secure, Lina bought a mansion on one of Paris's most fashionable boulevard's, the Avenue de Messine, which Ada would manage for her. On stage, she was famed as much for her great beauty and hourglass figure as for her voice - setting her apart from the generally well-built ladies that were her artistic rivals. Ada was equally beautiful and so much like her sister that, according to some accounts, she occasionally stood in for her at photo shoots.

In 1905 Lina sang at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre alongside the great tenor Enrico Caruso, and the following year accompanied him to New York where she spent the next two years singing with the Metropolitan Opera, afterwards touring in recitals. Whilst in New York she was engaged to sing at a Venetian Festa given by Mrs. Benjamin Guiness in honour of her good friend, the Duchess of Sutherland. The Duchess was much taken with the charming songbird who invited her, on her return to Europe, to be an honoured guest at a reception at the Sutherland's home in London. Even at the height of her success, however, her past was not easily forgotten. At the Duchess of Sutherland's reception she was formally introduced to Princess Vittoria di Teano from her homeland, causing that lady, much embarassed, to immediately leave the house remarking that she was "not accustomed to meeting such persons."

In 1909, to capitalise on her reputation as a great international beauty, Lina opened her own beauty salon on New York's Fifth Avenue, selling the latest Parisian fragrances as well her own brand of beauty cream, Creme a la Cavalieri. Later that year she embarked on another season with the Metropolitan Opera.

On June 18th, 1910, after a whirlwind romance, Lina married the recently divorced millionaire painter Robert Winthrop Chanler, much against the wishes of his family, a branch of the New York's prominent Astor's. The marriage was a disaster, lasting no longer than the duration of their honeymoon in Paris. Chanler returned to New York without her and took immediate steps to revoke the antenuptial agreement that would have given her access to his vast fortune. When Lina followed him back to New York a compromise was reached to settle their differences, but only in a financial way, Chanler paying Lina a reported seventy-five thousand dollars in a divorce settlement which became final in June, 1912.

On stage she was still as popular as ever, the toast of New York, Washington, and every European capital. In 1911 was engaged by Oscar Hammerstein to sing at the London Opera House, but her treatment by Chanler still rankled and she gave long interviews in which she railed against men and swore never to marry again. That vow, however, was almost as short lived as the marriage that provoked it had been. In 1913 she did in fact marry again, to prominent French tenor, Lucien Muratore. When they met Muratore was living with his common law wife, Marcelline Rouvier, a French prima ballerina with whom he had a baby daughter. Muratore threw over Marcelline for her, who then suffered the further indiginity of having to continue dancing in the same operas in which Lina and Muratore sang.

In 1914, Lina retired from the opera stage, concentrating instead on her expanding cosmetics business, writing beauty columns for magazines and newspapers, and acting as promoter and business manager for her husband. In 1915, she returned to Italy to make motion pictures, and later returned to America where she made four more silent films. After five years of retirement she returned to opera to sing with her husband in the Chicago Grand Opera Company, also touring with him in the United states giving joint recitals. The couple eventually split and were divorced in Paris in 1927.

Retiring again from the opera stage, this time permanently, Lina came to be one of the leading beauty specialists in Europe, at the height of her success owning a string of salons not only in Paris, but also in the Hotel Carlton at Cannes; the Hotel Roseraie at Biatritz; the Hotel de Paris at Monte Carlo; and another at Le Touquet.

Later in life she returned to her Italian homeland where she lived with her last husband, the writer Arnaldo Pavoni (whose pen name was Paolo d’Arvanni), on the outskirts of Florence. She died in tragic circumstances during the Second World War when, on 7th February, 1944, a bomb from an Allied bombing raid destroyed her home.

In life, her portrait was painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini and by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury. In 1955, Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida portrayed her in the film "The World's Most Beautiful Woman."


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