excitingly cosmopolitan city. Although he was not an opera-lover, Emperor Wilhelm I attended several of Emma's performances, and bestowed upon her the honorary title of Hofkammersängerin, or royal court singer. She would have a more marked success later with Wilhelm's successor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, a true opera connoisseur. However, the aged Empress Augusta did not miss any of Albani's performances; in spite of her fragile health, she would have herself pushed in a wheelchair along a special corridor that linked the palace to the opera house and the imperial box.
The Berliner Zeitung wrote: “Das Albani interpreted the very difficult and poetic character of Elsa with such consummate mastery that the audience was aroused by her to enthusiasm.”
The correspondent of The Times wired his byline to London: “Madame Albani appeared tonight as Elsa, singing her part in the native German. The house was crowded to the very ceiling and extravagant prices were paid for seats. Madame Albani achieved what may well be called a complete triumph, greater even than any she has won hitherto.”
Berlin high society showered the diva and her husband with invitations. The couple was asked to dine at the residence of the Austrian ambassador. At table, Emma found herself beside a man who was attached to the household of the Crown Princess Frederika. He told her: “Her Highness knew I would see you tonight. She asked me to give you this.” He handed Emma a telegram that Queen Victoria had cabled to her cousin a few days before. It read: “Am anxious to recommend Madame Albani to you. She is my Canadian subject, an excellent person, known to me, a splendid artiste and I take much interest in her. The Queen.”
The following day, the Crown Princess received Albani and her husband at home. She possessed a phonograph, recently invented, and showed them how it worked. She had a record of the diva performing, and thus, Albani heard herself singing for posterity for the first time. In spite of the distortion of the earliest recordings, this machine soon became all the rage and fascinated everyone who heard it.
Emma was given the opportunity to sing Gounod's oratorio, Rédemption, at the Birmingham Festival of 1882, under the composer's direction. Gounod liked the Canadian soprano's voice so much that he promised to compose a new work for her to create.
Not long into the new year, Emma learned that Richard Wagner, whose health had rapidly declined, was dying in Venice. She was affected by the sad news. “It is a terrible loss for modern music. If I had more time, we would take the train to Venice to contemplate the places he loved and wanted to see before bidding farewell to the world.” Daydreaming, she imagined herself in the dining car of the elegant Orient Express train with its mahogany panelling and crystal chandeliers, its waiters dressed in black and white transporting bottles of Champagne to tables covered in snowy linen and topped by vases of fresh-cut flowers.
Ernest brought his wife gently back to reality: “It would be better to prepare for your tour of the United States and Canada, my darling.”
Emma harboured a lingering bitterness towards her homeland. “My fellow Canadiens want to make it up to me,” she thought. “It's easy for them, now that I'm well-known all over the world: they don't have to take a chance on me.”
Wagner breathed his last while Albani and her husband, as well as fellow opera star Adelina Patti, her impresario, and their small troupe, were aboard the Pavonia, sailing from Liverpool to New York.2 The two-week crossing was a bad one, and Emma spent all but two days of it in her bunk, prostrated by seasickness. She arrived in New York greatly weakened and late for her rehearsals. In spite of this, she was ready on time for the scheduled performances.
After her twenty-year absence, Emma was eagerly awaited in Montreal. She was welcomed as an official guest: a reception committee met her at the American border and brought her into the city on a private railway car. A crowd of ten thousand greeted her as the train drew into Bonaventure Station. The snow-covered streets appeared fairy-like; members of the Snowshoe Club, dressed in their sporting outfits and carrying flaming torches, lined each side of the street when Albani and company emerged from the building.
Emma whispered happily to Ernest: “Snow-shoeing was my favourite sport when I was a girl.” A brass band struck up the traditional “Vive la Canadienne” as Emma and her friends climbed into the two sleighs assigned to take them to the Windsor Hotel. Having performed in Boston the previous evening, Emma was exhausted, but how could she have resisted such a fervent salute? She forgot her aching head and smiled at the cheering crowds.
Emma's father was waiting at the hotel. After happy greetings on all sides, he told her that tickets for her concerts at Queen's Hall on March 27, 29, and 31 varied in price from three to five dollars, and that special trains had been scheduled for those evenings to bring people into the city from outlying areas.
A reception in Albani's honour was organized the next day at Montreal's city hall. Emma was seated on the mayor's throne. After the official speeches, Ernest spoke to express thanks on his wife's behalf. “Tell them how happy they've made me,” she whispered as he rose to his feet. The ceremony ended with the reading of an ode written for Emma by Louis-Honoré Fréchette, Quebec's most recognized poet. Her eyes blurred with tears as she listened to the last verse:
'Tis no matter; with the confession of our expiated sins, Allow us to lay at your feet, Albani, All our best wishes, which, tonight, merge as one! Yonder, you were given fame and fortune; Your country, proud of you, comes to offer in its turn Its most fervent tribute and its most tender love.
Emma remained on the dais for over two hours afterwards, shaking hands with hundreds of admirers. Montreal's stores and offices were closed that day, and the streets thronged with people celebrating her return home.
At her recitals, when Emma sang Souvenirs d'un jeune âge, an aria from the opera La Pré aux clercs by Ferdinand Hérold that ends with the words: “Rendez-moi ma patrie, ou laissez-moi mourir,”3 the audience would stand and applaud lustily, sometimes for more than five minutes. The score of this aria was republished, with Albani's photograph on the cover page, and it came to be considered a Québécois national song.
One journalist wrote: “Last night at Queen's Hall, the public was beside itself. There wasn't a seat left in the balcony, where several people remained standing for the entire performance. Madame Albani possesses a voice of exquisite tenderness.”
To show her appreciation for the way she had been welcomed in Montreal, the international star who had been “the little Lajeunesse girl” donated five hundred dollars from her concert takings to the mayor's office, to be distributed among the city's poor.
Fortunately, Emma had enough free time to see old friends and relatives. She visited her father, her brother Adélard, who was now a priest, and even her grandmother Rachel in the begonia-surrounded house in Chambly. And the great Emma Albani proudly went to sing Ave Maria in the chapel of the Sacred Heart Convent in Sault-au-Recollet, where she had sung so joyfully as a young pensionnaire many years before.
Naturally, Emma was moved by all this attention and heartfelt gestures of appreciation. However, for her, “home, sweet home” was now England.
Albani during one of her numerous Atlantic crossings, with her husband Ernest and (probably) her sister Cornélia.
1. Private concerts were very popular among the aristocracy; there was great competition to obtain the artists most in vogue for these musical soirées.
2.
