Although born and christened Marie-Louise-Cecile-Emma Lajeunesse at Chambly, Quebec, it was as Emma Albani that she became Canada's first internationally acclaimed diva. A favourite of Queen Victoria, she visited Buckingham Palace and Balmoral Castle, sang at the White House and before the Tsar of Russia at St. Peterburg, won the hearts of Berliners for her Wagnerian performances, and was a principal star at London's Convent Garden for more than two decades. Today, however, Canada's premiere ninteenth century diva is virtually unknown.

Emma, the daughter of a music teacher, studied music four hours a day from the age of five. At eight, she was “... able to read at sight almost all of the works of the old masters as well as modern composers.” After her mother's death when Emma was seven, she attended the Couvent du Sacré Coeur in Montréal where her father was a music teacher. There she became so proficient as a composer, pianist, organist, harpist, and singer that she was not allowed to compete for the music prizes.
 

The beautiful voice of Emma Albani was heard round the world in a career spanning more than four decades. The diva performed at Paris' Elysee Palace, Milan's La Scala, London's Covent Garden and Crystal Palace, and Scotland's Balmoral Castle. Well known throughout all of Europe as well as Russia, Indian, Ceylon, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Mexico, she sang coast to coast in Canada and the U.S.A. The Prince of Wales while visiting Canada in 1860 heard her sing and, never forgetting her voice, persuaded her to perform at Windsor Castle for the private family funeral, in 1901, of his mother, and Emma's friend, Queen Victoria. This oil on canvas, Marie-Emma Lajeunesse, Madame Ablani was rendered inv1877 by William Hicock Low [Photo, courtesy Museée du Queébec 49.83]

She considered being a nun, but the Mother Superior, Madame Trincano, persuaded her to pursue a musical career. “God has given you a beautiful voice,” she told Emma, “and I think it is clearly your duty to use it.”

By then she had already performed a number of times, one of the most auspicious being a concert for the oldest son of Queen Victoria when, as the Prince of Wales in 1860, he officially opened Victoria Bridge in Montréal. Over the next 40 years he heard her sing many times and, in 1901, as King Edward VII, invited her to sing at a private family funeral for Queen Victoria.

In 1865, at age 18, Emma graduated from the convent. Her father then moved the family to Albany, New York, to further develop her skills. There she became the soprano soloist, organist, and choir director of St. Joseph’s Church until 1868 when the bishop personally helped organize two concerts to raise funds so that she could study in Paris. Later, in Milan, she studied with Maestro Francesco Lamperti, who taught her for several months before agreeing that she could make her grand debut as Amina in Vincenzo Bellini’s La Sonnambula at Messina in Sicily. After she had rehearsed her first aria, the conductor told Emma, “My child, your success is assured and it will be very great.”

Her elocution master suggested she use the name of a famous old Italian family whose members had all died except for an aging Cardinal, and it was as Emma Albani that Sicilian audiences cheered her. When she sang the same opera at Aci Reale, a reviewer wrote, “Fancy the Sonnambula, that superhu-man and inimitable idyll, with this young creature in it from beyond the Atlantic, and yet with such a vast perception of Italian art.”

After a triumphant season in Malta in 1870-71, where she starred in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, she returned to Aci Reale for a benefit performance which became two performances when the crowds broke down the doors to hear the rehearsal. Following the benefit, shops were shut, and the Mayor and Council, along with some 5,000 people, saw her off at the station, bound for England to meet Frederick Gye, manager of Covent Garden, who decided she should make her debut at the start of the 1872 season.
 

Emma Albani wearing the cross given her by Queen Victoria after a command performance at Windsor Castle in 1874. [Photo, courtesy Nationa Library of Canada]

Success followed success in London. It began with La Sonnambula, which she later sang in Moscow and again, in 1874, in her operatic debut at New York's Academy of Music. In 1875 she played Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin. Always the perfectionist, before appearing in that role she went to Germany for two weeks of intense study with a German conductor.

When she visited Berlin in 1882 to play Elsa, Kaiser Wilhelm I summoned her to his box and named her a Royal Court Singer. A reviewer wrote that Madame Albani, in the German tongue, conjured up, “The most poetical, but likewise most difficult character of Elsa with such consummate mastery that the audience is aroused by her to enthusiasm.”

By then, Emma was Madame Gye in private life, having married Frederick's son Ernest in 1878. Later that year, Ernest became manager of Covent Garden after his father's death. Emma continued using her professional name and was in much demand not just for operas but also for oratorio festivals at which she was the star soloist. These festivals, held in many English cities, were even more popular than operas.

In 1883 a second American tour included an invitation to sing at the White House and a visit to Montreal where she shook hands with up to 2,000 people at a city hall reception. "The afternoon was like a holiday, shops were closed, crowds were in the streets and we were cheered all the way back as we returned from the Hotel de Ville to our hotel," she recalled in her autobiography, Forty Years of Song.

After a performance in Montreal, one reviewer wrote, "A voice of exquisite sweetness and wonderful power, compass and freedom, aided by an art so great that it concealed every evidence of itself filled the room and enthralled those who heard it." In 1889, however, George Bernard Shaw, reviewing her performance in Handel's Messiah found her "... too bent on finishing 'effectively' to finish well."

Despite Shaw, more tours followed in various European countries and in North America where, at the New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1890, she became the first Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. She remained as the Met's leading soprano for the 1891-92 season and played Senta in The Flying Dutchman before concluding her appearances in opera in the United States. She continued singing operas in England and Europe for another four years, winning praise especially for her performance as Isolde in Tristan and Isolde at Covent Garden in 1896 - the last year she sang opera. One reviewer wrote, "To hear the music sung perfectly in tune was alone a treat that was well nigh a revelation."

Concert tours continued for more than another decade before she retired: Austria, Australia, and South Africa in 1898, tours of Canada in 1903 and '06 and of Ceylon and India in 1907 as well as South Africa and New Zealand. Retirement, however, was not kind to Emma and her husband. Even though she had earned considerable sums during her years as a performer, some bad investments forced them into near poverty following her retirement.

In order to live comfortably, Emma sold some of the many gifts she had received from royalty and others. She also sang in music halls and taught voice, but as these steps failed to enable Emma and Ernest to maintain their home in London's Kensington district, they rented it out and leased a smaller one. In 1920 the British government granted them an annual pension of 100 pounds. When Prime Minister Mackenzie King visited her in 1924, he was shocked to find Emma "old and feeble and dependent ... married to a man named Gye who is quite as helpless as herself." He tried to get a pension approved in Canada but lacked a majority government and the motion was defeated. He appealed to the Quebec government, pointing out, "her name has been too splendidly associated with the name of our country to let it suffer this kind of eclipse" but the appeal was ignored.

Following the death of Ernest in 1925, her financial situation prompted two major concerts: one in London that featured some of her protegees and the other staged at the fort in the town of her birth, Chambly. The latter, sponsored by the Montreal newspaper, La Presse, raised $4095.55 and that, along with the proceeds of the London event, enabled her to move back to her Kensington home and live in comfort until her death in 1930.

Mel James