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Show SINGER SUFFERS TRIALS IN ITALY Miss McVane Was Victim of Many Persecutions During Dur-ing the War. SCOFFED AT IN STREET American Ambassador Puts Wheels in Motion and Her Blackmailer Is Sent to Prison Puccini Planned an Opera for Her. New York. "If there was lack of artistic temperament In the original composition of Miss Dorothea Alastair McVane, her experiences as a professional profes-sional singer in Italy would have made good the defect, for she so impressed im-pressed the gr at Puccini that, at his instance, she made her operatic debut as Mimi, in his "La Boheme," carrying carry-ing through the part with success when she was in the first stages of typhoid fever; she fell under ollicial suspicion as a spy in Taranto, where there Is an Italian naval station; she underwent a siege of blackmail that resulted in sending two oppressors to prison, and she became the betrothed of a young noble, who was killed in the war. In addition, her progress toward a career was hampered by the stern opposition op-position of her father, Silas Marcus McVane, formerly professor of history and international law in Harvard, retiring re-tiring as. emeritus professor. Afterward After-ward the family became so proud of the j'oung singer that they established a home In Rome, where Professor McVane Mc-Vane died at about the beginning of the war. Scoffed and Hissed. In connection with the spy and blackmail episodes it seems that Miss McVane unwittingly snapped her camera cam-era when the lens was pointed in the direction of masked batteries. Soon she became the object of scoffing in the street, she was hissed at the opera, op-era, she found herself unable to get letters to her friends or to 'hear from them. She became so nervous and dispirited dis-pirited that she wished to go away, regardless of her operatic contract, and was threatened with arrest if she tried to go. When, at last, men annoyed an-noyed her with threats of publishing the spy story and thus ruining her career unless she paid money to them she contrived to get word to the American ambassador in Rome, who put the wheels in motion for a blackmail black-mail trial, whereby Miss McVane was cleared and the men were punished. She was led to adopt singing a a profession on the advice of artists and others Who heard her voice in Paris, where she had gone merely to perfect her French. When her French instructors instruc-tors sent her to Milan, with letters to the composer Puccini, she knew the leading roles in 20 operas. It was reported re-ported that Puccini intended to write an opera for her, but the war absorbed ab-sorbed him in other affairs. Miss McVane is something of a psychic. Tiie story Is that both she and her titled lover believed firmly in the suivivnl of personality after death and the ability of the disembodied spirit to communicate with the living; and that they exchanged vows that the one dyi.-ig first would visit the survivor surviv-or on earth. Ever since the iLver died she is said to have been expecting such a visit. Miss Me Vn lie's sisters are Miss Edith McVane. managing writer and novelist, and the Baroness Dodeman de Placy, whose husband is a French cavalry officer. The McVane home in Rome was long a favorite meeting place for social, literary and artistic celebrities. |