1. Natalina "Lina" Cavalieri was an Italian operatic dramatic soprano, actress, and monologist.
11 Facts About Lina Cavalieri
1. 2.
Lina Cavalieri was born on Christmas Day at Viterbo, some 80 kilometres north of Rome.
3.
Lina Cavalieri lost her parents at the age of fifteen and became a ward of the state, sent to live in a Roman Catholic orphanage.
4.
Lina Cavalieri took voice lessons and made her opera debut in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1900.
5.
In 1904, she sang at the Opera de Monte-Carlo then in 1905, at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris, Lina Cavalieri starred opposite Enrico Caruso in the Umberto Giordano opera Fedora.
6.
Lina Cavalieri remained with the Metropolitan Opera for the next two seasons, performing again with Caruso in 1907, in Puccini's Manon Lescaut.
7.
Lina Cavalieri became one of the most photographed stars of her time.
8.
Lina Cavalieri was killed on 7 February 1944 during an Allied bombing raid that destroyed her home in Florence near Poggio Imperiale, where she had been placed under police surveillance because of her foreign husband.
9.
Lina Cavalieri's portrait was painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini and by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Muller-Ury.
10.
From her relationship to Alexandre Bariatinsky, Lina Cavalieri had one son, Alexandre Bariatinsky, Jr.
11.
Lina Cavalieri was serving in the Italian Army early in WW1 when she went to the authorities trying to find him.