“The groom has placed the broad Atlantic Ocean between him and the bride,” DailyExpertNews reported a week after the wedding, noting that “Russia’s wealthy Prince Bariatinsky has paid constant attention to Mme. Cavaliers.” She and the Prince had been involved before; she even referred to herself as the Princess Bariatinsky in her memoirs.
It was not difficult for Cavalieri to break up. “He gave me everything he had as a gift: jewels, works of art, money,” she said in 1940 (when she also raised the possibility that the marriage had been a stunt, saying that she and Chanler had made a bet that they could not stay married for more than a week). She mentioned “the three mansions I acquired.”
But if the marriage made Cavalieri wealthy, it also made her unemployed in New York. “It seems clear that the Chanler affair prevented the Metropolitan Opera from performing Cavalieri again,” Fryer and Usova wrote, presumably for fear of offending Met patrons who associated with the Astors. The Met, “at the request of the wealthiest board members, did everything it could to get her out of town,” said Ms. Hume. “When a young Vanderbilt gave proof that he was next on Lina’s dance card, her days at the Met were over.”
Cavalieri moved on to the Met’s rival, Manhattan Opera (founded by Oscar Hammerstein, grandfather of the Broadway powerhouse), but not for long. She returned to Europe, where she became a star in silent films. She also opened a beauty salon and, according to one account, appeared in advertisements for Palmolive soap, “explaining that it was thanks to this product that she kept her beauty intact.” She also marketed her own perfume, “Mona Lina.”
Cavalieri was in his sixties when World War II broke out, living in Florence with husband No. 4. Her death was another dramatic episode: an air raid siren sounded. Their domestic staff rushed to a shelter. But Cavalieri and her husband, who stayed, were still in their house when a stray bomb hit.
She had collected her jewelry, just as Manon Lescaut, another beautiful young opera heroine with a penchant for luxury, had done when she was captured. Cavalieri had played the part at the Met not long after her turn in “Fedora.”
