Born in Belgium as Clara Lardinois, the youngest of 17 children, Blanche Arral was destined for a life wilder than fiction. She began her career at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, where Massenet added a small part to Manon for her, but her love for adventure soon led her to perform around the world. During her travels Arral befriended such legendary figures as Sarah Bernhardt, Mata Hari, Harry Houdini, Victor Hugo, Franz Liszt, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Jack London, who based a character on her in his book Smoke Bellew. In Russia she met Rasputin, and in Turkey, the sultan Abdülhamid II. She describes her recording sessions with Thomas Edison and her run-ins with the difficult Nellie Melba.

After a lifetime of globe-trotting, Arral settled in the United States, nearly forgotten. Writer and opera fan Ira Glackens discovered her living in a small New Jersey apartment and persuaded her to record her extraordinary stories. More than 60 years later, editor William R. Moran has confirmed the veracity of Arral’s account and annotated this extraordinary memoir....