DING DONG!

So - we have defeated all the Members!

We are disappointed though. Let us then now make it very simple.

CLUE 4: The lady was the most highly regarded most famous and highest paid musician of her time. Sic transit and all that what.

CLUE 5 is another photograph:

Oh, I'm utterly useless on historic divas of yore; not my topic at all, I'm afraid. I lack the time to research, and both the budget to acquire scratchy old archive recordings and the patience to endure all that snap-crackle-and-pop, I'm afraid   Nor am I a subscriber to the "my dear, you should have heard Tagliabue's wax cylinders of the role!" school of opera. But I watch on with enthusiasm as we identify the redoubtable lady who is Mr Grew's Pic 01.

As soon as I saw Member Grew's intriguing photographs I was troubled by the notion that the gentleman in the Pagliacci outfit might have been the gentleman pictured below.



Can Members please allay my suspicions?

Although on further inspection the chin seems wrong...

You mean, Mr Patti?

Perhaps not in the Winter Garden room its very self but Craig-y-Nos was the locus in quo for her first recordings was not it?

One of my sources suggests that the husband who passed on in harness might indeed have been Nicolini the tenor already mentioned by Member Garnett, and that Patti had divorced his predecessor rather than waiting for the aforementioned clog-popping. I read here that the marriage to Nicolini took place on June 19 1886, the previous husband not passing on until 1889.

All this is of course quite likely neither here nor there.

It is time we feel to put Members out of their misery.

1. WHO was the lady?
Answer: Mr. Garnett got it in the end; she was the Baroness Cederström (also known as Madame Adelina Patti), variously described on the Internet as Spanish, Italian, American, Welsh, and Swedish. In 1870 Tsar Alexander the Second awarded her the Russian Order of Merit. (PASS)

2a. Of WHAT building did this room form part?
Answer: Craig-y-Nos Castle, again got by Mr. Garnett. Madame Patti bought it in 1878 for £3500, and spent £200,000 extending it. (PASS)

2b. WHAT was the function of the room?
Answer: It was the "Conservatory and Summer Dining-Room" of the castle. It still exists and according to this link http://www.craigynoscastle.co.uk/conservatory.htm is being restored as we speak. Note that it is not the same as the Winter Garden (an even larger structure, visible on the right in this old photograph) which was later transported to Swansea and there re-erected as the Patti Pavilion. (FAIL)

The castle contains also its own theatre, perfectly preserved to this day. And as Mr. Garnett somehow managed to intimate Madame Patti as a convenience for her many visitors built her own waiting-room at Penwyllt station directly opposite the castle.

3a. WHERE was this photograph taken?
Answer: Again at Craig-y-Nos Castle, during the time of its use as a sanatorium for the consumptive. Now it is a kind of hotel. (FAIL)

3b. WHO was the cheery personage in the foreground?
Answer: Harry Secombe the well-known Welsh singer and comedian, touring the wards after a Christmas pantomime performance in 1953. (FAIL)

At this http://www.craig-y-nos.blogspot.com/ link Members may find both Harry Secombe and something about Madame Patti's shade, which is said still to haunt the castle especially in the wee hours.

And here http://history.powys.org.uk/history/ystrad/craig1.html is an excellent history of the castle.

Well, the man in the black duffel coat playing the electric guitar appears to be Stockhausen, but I expect I'm wrong.