in these days: opera singers would go on tour with other singers and musicians.
3. “Give me back my country or let me die.”
9
The Star Fades
“Roberto, blacken the sides of my gown, please,” Albani told the costume assistant at Covent Garden. It was the dress rehearsal of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, in which Emma was singing the role of the tragic heroine.
“But, Madame, it has already been done.”
“Do it again, then. And don't roll your eyes at me! I'm not the only one making demands here. You've already heightened the tenor's heels so that his voice will project more; You've loosened his shirt so he can breathe better, and You've changed his velvet jacket for a brocade one that won't absorb the sound as much!”
“She's only taking her stage jitters out on me,” said the costume assistant to himself. “I should be used to it by now!”
Albani was thirty-six years old that season, while Juliette, the heroine of the play and the opera, is supposed to be fifteen. The great cantatrice was still able to create the necessary illusion on stage to fit her roles – resorting to the occasional artifice, such as darkening the sides of her costumes to appear slimmer. In any case, opera-lovers are notably blind to physical short-comings as long as the singer's voice is worth listening to, and Albani's voice was still in full flower.
In spite of her continuing worldwide success, it seemed that people were beginning to lack the appropriate reverence towards the diva – perhaps because Ernest Gye was no longer in charge of Covent Garden. The theatre had declined under his directorship, and he had resigned as its manager. The official reason given out was that Ernest had decided to dedicate all his energies to managing his wife's career.
This did not prevent Albani from triumphing in Lohengrin – sung in German – at the same Covent Garden Theatre. Emma was able to savour her victory more sweetly after the opera and the festival season ended, ensconced in a country residence that one of her admirers, Lord Fife, had offered for her use the previous year.
Old Mar Lodge was a large hunting pavilion in the valley of the River Dee in the Scottish Highlands, in a landscape of lakes, islands, forests, and hills that reminded Emma of Canada. However, the mysterious countryside, along with its relics of battles among the clans and the piercing notes of the bagpipes, was pure Scottish. Albani and her family would sojourn for vacations in the land of Donizetti's Lucia and Verdi's Lady Macbeth for five years.1
The estate was only a few miles away from Balmoral, the castle belonging to the Queen. Victoria was the first neighbour to extend a friendly invitation to the Gyes.
As time went on, it became customary for Emma to sing, accompanying herself on the piano, at intimate receptions at Balmoral. Victoria, lulled by the music and the warmth from the open hearth, would often drift into slumber. Once, she was rudely awakened when Emma fell onto the carpet at her feet; a leg of the piano bench had suddenly given way. The Queen, still half asleep, unthinkingly uttered her famous stock phrase, the severe “We are not amused,” and the guests burst into laughter at the incongruity of the situation.
Emma returned Victoria's invitation, and the Queen came to the Lodge for tea on several occasions. The young Ernest Frederick was impressed: “Oh, Mummy, what a little woman for such a big queen!” he said one day.
These holidays in Scotland were the only times that the boy could see both his parents as much as he liked. What joy! His father took him on expeditions into the hills, and his mother read him Peter Rabbit and other Beatrix Potter stories before he went to bed. Knowing that she would go off on a singing engagement all too soon, he would hug her tightly.
When the holidays ended, Emma would return to London, and the season of opera performances and festival recitals would start up again. In 1885, she sang again in the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace,2 and at the Birmingham Festival, where she created a new oratorio, Mors et Vita, composed for her by Charles Gounod.3 The composer and the soprano collaborated together in preparing the concert; he addressed her as “my dear great interpreter,” and rewrote certain sections of the score that Emma found difficult.
Queen Victoria attended the first performance of the oratorio and invited Albani back to Balmoral; Emma had become a regular member of the royal entourage in Scotland. Victoria took out a page of her diary and gave it to Emma, after writing on it: “To Madame Albani-Gye, with my warmest thanks for the great pleasure I had upon hearing her sing. – Victoria Regina, Balmoral Castle, September 24, 1885.” Emma kept it carefully among her most valued souvenirs, among tributes from Gounod, Brahms, and Franz Liszt.
Liszt came to London in April 1886 for the premiere performance of his oratorio, The Legend of St. Elizabeth, created by Albani. Emma was in awe of the illustrious black-caped composer with the face of an ascetic – by this time, he had been ordained a Franciscan and styled himself the Abbé Liszt. After the performance, he wrote to thank Emma and expressed his admiration for her art. She never saw Liszt again: he died later that year.
Albani had a gift for inspiring composers. A few years later, during a tour of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, she met Johannes Brahms in Vienna. He reportedly wept when he heard her sing his Requiem.
At the beginning of the 1887 Berlin opera season, Albani sang Lohengrin and Die fliegande Holländer in German, and La traviata, Rigoletto, and Faust in Italian.
Her valise bulging with musical scores, Emma crisscrossed Europe, returning to Covent Garden to sing Antonida in A Life for the Tsar by Mikhail Glinka – the story of a peasant hero who died saving the first Romanoff tsar in 1613. The work brought back poignant memories of St. Petersburg, where Albani's fresh beauty and innocence had captured Russian hearts. Now, she was almost forty and would soon begin an inevitable decline as far as her singing voice was concerned.
But Albani hadn't yet reached that precarious stage, and Ernest arranged her third North American tour. In January 1889, they set sail for Canada on the Etruria, accompanied by a convivial party of other talented singers and musicians. Rehearsals were held every day of the voyage; on rough days, the piano had to be bolted to the floor.
The steamer made its entry into the scenic Gulf of St. Lawrence. When Albani and her troupe disem-barked at Quebec City, they lodged at the Château Frontenac Hotel, with its sweeping view of the river. Emma was invited to the Quebec provincial parliament and was the guest of honour at the luncheon given by Premier Honoré Mercier after the morning's session.
“The weather here is pleasant; I hope it will still be so at the time of your visit,” wrote Sir John A. Macdonald, enjoining Emma and her husband to stay at Earnscliffe, the prime minister's official residence perched on a cliff overlooking the Ottawa River. The couple travelled to the national capital in a private railway car provided by William Van Horne, the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway; it was lavishly fitted with beds, a parlour, and a kitchen.
They enjoyed their time in the nation's raw new capital; Ernest even went tobogganing with Sir John!
After a zigzag into the United States, their itinerary took them to Montreal, where Albani gave the farewell concert of her tour. This city also had its château: a huge castle built entirely of ice! A masterpiece of the imagination, with towers and turrets hacked from the frozen St. Lawrence River, and illuminated by electric lights, it gleamed and sparkled
