Spirit Taught Her to Sing, She Says

1920

CLAIMS VISION OF PATTI CAME AND GAVE HER ADVICE

With No Knowledge of Music, Girl Startles Critics by Her Wonderful Tones

NEW YORK, N. Y. -- Miss Belle Philrose, 23, who says she has never studied vocal culture and cannot read music, solemnly asserts that the spirit of Adelina Patti is teaching her to sing.

After the death of her parents, ten years ago, the girl went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Philip Levin and moved with them to Astoria two years ago. She does the housework for the family, but is treated as a daughter. She says she never got beyond the fifth grade of the grammar school and never was interested in music, not even humming tunes about her housework. The change came last October.

"Face Appeared in Room"

"Late one afternoon, while I was finishing some sewing," she said, "the sweet face of a woman appeared before me in the room. I didn't see anybody -- just the face, of no particular age, with dark eyes and dark hair rolled back. 'I am Adelina Patti,' said the smiling lips. 'You are too gifted to be a servant. You should be a great singer. I will teach you.'

"From time to time the vision appeared again, urging me to sing, and saying I should be a reincarnation of Patti. So I began playing and singing, though I cannot read a note of music, and no one ever showed me how to sing. Jake Dale, musical director of the war camp community service, heard me and was amazed when I told him I had never studied. He got me the chance to sing for the soldiers.

"When a famous woman teacher offered to instruct me free, the vision told me not to let anyone teach me -- that Patti herself would do it.

"I see the vision every day or two now."

Even Speaking Voice Changes

Miss Philrose says confidence has taken the place of diffidence since she began singing under Patti's direction. Even her speaking voice has changed.

She sat at the piano and played and sang Tosti's "Goodbye" and part of the "Chanson Provencale" in a sweet, bell-like soprano, without affectation. She says that Dr. Walter F. Prince, investigating officer of the Psychical Research Society, was studying her case, and pronounced it one of "remarkable music control."

Jack Dale admits he cannot understand the phenomenon. He thinks there is something psychical about it, but suggested her idea of a "vision" might have originated in a novel. He had never known anybody to do the things she does without coaching. At a trial in the Amsterdam Opera House, he said, she took a high C and sustained it in a way that startled her critical hearers, and then hadn't any idea what she had done.

She is of French descent, a pleasant looking girl, who speaks good English.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 10.