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Documenting Divas: Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg in the Chicago Tribune, 1860-1876

Jancaus, Kathryn Beatrice
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8382-3990
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1598021939025324

Abstract Details

2020, Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, Music History.
When Swedish soprano Jenny Lind (1820-1887) came to the United States in 1850, the ecstatic craze surrounding her arrival belied a larger trend which was taking root among the American press and public: a fascination with the lives of celebrity opera singers. One of the Lind enthusiasts was a college student named George P. Upton (1834-1919), who later became the music critic for the Chicago Tribune. In his work over the following decades, Upton continued to take a vivid interest in the lives, careers, and personalities of prima donnas, writing about them with an intensely personal style that was common in newspapers of his time. As journalists for the Tribune provided news about opera stars to their readers in Chicago, they not only shaped the public images of these singers but also promoted the appreciation of classical music as a cause for civic pride in their relatively young city. In this study I examine how George P. Upton and other journalists published in the Chicago Tribune wrote about two star sopranos of the mid to late nineteenth century: Adelina Patti (1843-1919) and Clara Louise Kellogg (1842-1916). I bring together newspaper articles from the years 1860 through 1876 and use secondary literature to place the critics’ approach in context. In each case study, I delve into historical perspectives reflected in this music criticism to trace how journalists articulated concepts of celebrity, genius, nationalism, and gender. I especially draw from scholarship on prima donnas by Hilary Poriss, Kristin Turner, and Katherine Preston as I explore how music critics of the time used the lenses of the nineteenth century to observe the light of these bright musical stars and reflect on American society.
Eftychia Papanikolaou (Advisor)
Ryan Ebright (Committee Member)
114 p.
American History; Journalism; Music
Music criticism; opera; soprano; prima donna; diva; Chicago; United States; nineteenth century; Adelina Patti; Clara Louise Kellogg; George Upton; Chicago Tribune

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Jancaus, K. B. (2020). Documenting Divas: Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg in the Chicago Tribune, 1860-1876 [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1598021939025324

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Jancaus, Kathryn. Documenting Divas: Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg in the Chicago Tribune, 1860-1876. 2020. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1598021939025324.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Jancaus, Kathryn. "Documenting Divas: Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg in the Chicago Tribune, 1860-1876." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1598021939025324

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1598021939025324
498
© 2020, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Documenting Divas: Adelina Patti and Clara Louise Kellogg in the Chicago Tribune, 1860-1876 by Kathryn Beatrice Jancaus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.