Music: Prima Donna from Perleberg

(See front cover)

Bright in the pattern of New York's history have been the dozens of prima donnas who made news with every utterance, set fashions in food and dress, left vivid memories with every song they sang. Old men still live who remember pious Jenny Lind when she trilled in gaslit Castle Garden, a protégée of that amazing Yankee, Phineas T. Barnum. Adelina Patti was singing at the old Academy of Music on 14th Street when broughams first brought Vanderbilts and Astors to the shiny new doors of the Metropolitan Opera House....