Memoirs of an American Prima DonnaKellogg, Clara Louise
General
Memoirs of an American Prima Donna
Kellogg, Clara Louise
Kellogg, Clara Louise, 1842-1916; Singers -- United States -- Biography
all the available wigs, in spite of a popular prejudice against them as
immovable. They were in general composed of hemp rope with about as much
look about them of real hair as--Mme. Carvalho's! I had, finally, to
wait until I could get a wig made in Europe and have it imported. When
it came at last, it was a beauty--although my hair troubles were not
entirely over even then. I had so much hair of my own that all the
braiding and pinning in the world would not eliminate it entirely, and
it had a tendency to stick out in lumps over my head even under the wig,
giving me some remarkable bumps of phrenological development. I will say
that we put it on pretty well in spite of all difficulties, my mother at
last achieving a way of brushing the hair of the wig into my own hair
and combining the two in such a way as to let the real hair act as a
padding and lining to the artificial braids. The result was very good,
but it was, I am inclined to believe, more trouble than it was worth.
Wigs were so rare and, as a rule, so ugly in those days that my big,
blond perruque, that cost nearly $200 (the hair was sold by weight),
caused the greatest sensation. People not infrequently came behind the
scenes and begged to be allowed to examine it. Artists were not nearly
so sacred nor so safe from the public then. Now, it would be impossible
for a stranger to penetrate to a _prima donna's_ dressing-room or hotel
apartment; but we were constantly assailed by the admiring, the critical
and, above all, the curious.
Of course I did not know what to wear. My old friend Ella Porter was in
Paris at the time and went to see Carvalho in Marguerite, especially on
my account, and sent me rough drawings of her costumes. I did not like
them very well. I next studied von Kaulbach's pictures and those of
other German illustrators, and finally decided on the dress. First, I
chose for the opening act a simple blue and brown frock, such as an
upper-class peasant might wear. Everyone said it ought to be white,
which struck me as singularly out of place. German girls don't wear
frocks that have to be constantly washed. Not even now do they, and I am
certain they had even less laundry work in the period of the story. It
was said that a white gown in the first act would symbolise innocence.
In the face of all comment and suggestion, however, I wore the blue
dress trimmed with brown and it looked very well. Another one of my
points was that I did not try to make Marguerite angelically beautiful.
There is no reason to suppose that she was even particularly pretty.
"Henceforth," says Mephisto to the rejuvenated Faustus, "you will greet
a Helen in every wench you meet!"
In the church scene I wore grey and, at first, a different shade of
grey in the last act; but I changed this eventually to white because
white looked better when the angels were carrying me up to heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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