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Soprano Adelina
Patti -- dubbed the "Queen of Hearts" -- trained her
own parrot to scream out "Cash! Cash!" whenever her manager
entered the room. Although she was the highest paid singer of her
day, she refused to rehearse, because she felt that it would "tire
the voice." She filed for divorce from her husband after he
told her "I have heard you more advantageously in the same act on
former occasions," after she sang a performance of La Traviata
with a cold. She blamed a San Francisco earthquake on Etelka
Gerster, her greatest rival, who she had decided had quite obviously used
a hex to control nature. George Bernard Shaw once even wrote of her:
"Patti will get up and bow to you in the very agony of stage death if
you only drop your stick accidentally." |
