Rubini, born at Bergamo in the year 1795, made his _debut_ in one of the theatres of his native town, at the age of twelve, in a woman"s part.
This curious prima donna afterward sat at the door of the theatre, between two candles, holding a plate, in which the admiring public deposited their offerings to the fair _beneficiaire_. His next step was playing on the violin in the orchestra between the acts of comedies, and singing in the chorus during the operatic season. He seems to have been unnoticed, except as one of the _hoi polloi_ of the musical rabble, till an accident attracted attention to his talent. A drama was to be produced in which a very difficult cavatina was introduced. The manager was at a loss for any one to sing it till Rubini proffered his services.
The fee was a trifling one, but it paved the way for an engagement in the minor parts of opera. The details of Rubini"s early life seem to be involved in some obscurity. He was engaged in several wandering companies as second tenor, and in 1814, Rubini then being nineteen years of age, we find him singing at Pavia for thirty-six shillings a month.
In the latter part of his career he was paid twenty thousand pounds sterling a year for his services at the St. Petersburg Imperial Opera. This singer acquired his vocal style, which his contemporaries p.r.o.nounced to be matchless, in the operas of Rossini, and was indebted to no special technical training, except that which he received through his own efforts, and the incessant practice of the lyric art in provincial companies. A splendid musical intelligence, however, repaired the lack of early teaching, though, perhaps, a voice less perfect in itself would have fared badly through such desultory experiences. Like so many of the great singers of the modern school, Rubini first gained his reputation in the operas of Bellini and Donizetti, and many of the tenor parts of these works were expressly composed for him. Rubini was singing at the Scala, Milan, when Barbaja, the _impressario_, who had heard Bellini"s opera of "Bianca e Fernando," at Naples, commissioned the young composer, then only twenty years old, to produce a new opera for his theatre in the Tuscan capital. He gave him the libretto of "Il Pirata," and Bellini, in company with Rubini (for they had become intimate friends), retired to the country. Here the singer studied, as they were produced, the simple, touching airs which he afterward delivered on the stage with such admirable expression. With this friendship began Rubini"s art connection with the Italian composer, which lasted till the latter"s too early death. Rubini was such a great singer, and possessed such admirable powers of expression, especially in pathetic airs (for it was well said of him, "_qu"il avait des larmes dans la voix_"), that he is to be regarded as the creator of that style of singing which succeeded that of the Rossinian period. The florid school of vocalization had been carried to an absurd excess, when Rubini showed by his example what effect he could produce by singing melodies of a simple emotional nature, without depending at all on mere vocalization. It is remarkable that it was largely owing to Rubini"s suggestions and singing that Bellini made his first great success, and that Donizetti"s "Anna Bolena," also the work which laid the foundation of this composer"s greatness, should have been written and produced under similar conditions.
The immense power, purity, and sweetness of his voice probably have never been surpa.s.sed. The same praise may be awarded to his method of producing his tones, and all that varied and complicated skill which comes under the head of vocalization. Rubini had a chest of uncommon bigness, and the strength of his lungs was so prodigious that on one occasion he broke his clavicle in singing a B flat. The circ.u.mstances were as follows: He was singing at La Scala, Milan, in Pacini"s "Talismano." In the recitative which accompanies the entrance of the tenor in this opera, the singer has to attack B flat without preparation, and hold it for a long time. Since Farinelli"s celebrated trumpet-song, no feat had ever attained such a success as this wonderful note of Rubini"s. It was received nightly with tremendous enthusiasm.
One night the tenor planted himself in his usual att.i.tude, inflated his chest, opened his mouth; but the note would not come. _Os liabet, sed non clambit_. He made a second effort, and brought all the force of his lungs into play. The note pealed out with tremendous power, but the victorious tenor felt that some of the voice-making mechanism had given way. He sang as usual through the opera, but discovered on examination afterward that the clavicle was fractured. Rubini had so distended his lungs that they had broken one of their natural barriers. Rubini"s voice was an organ of prodigious range by nature, to which his own skill had added several highly effective notes. His chest range, it is a.s.serted by Fetis, covered two octaves from C to C, which was carried up to F in the _voce di testa_. With such consummate skill was the transition to the falsetto managed that the most delicate and alert ear could not detect the change in the vocal method. The secret of this is believed to have begun and died with Rubini. Perhaps, indeed, it was incommunicable, the result of some peculiarity of vocal machinery.
From what has been said of Rubini"s lack of dramatic talent, it may be rightfully inferred, as was the fact, that he had but little power in musical declamation. Rubini was always remembered by his songs, and though the extravagance of embroidery, the roulades and cadenzas with which he ornamented them, oftentimes raised a question as to his taste, the exquisite pathos and simplicity with which he could sing when he elected were incomparable. This artist was often tempted by his own transcendant powers of execution to do things which true criticism would condemn, but the ease with which he overcame the greatest vocal difficulties excused for his admirers the superabundance of these displays. In addition to the great finish of his art, his geniality of expression was not to be resisted. He so thoroughly and intensely enjoyed his own singing that he communicated this persuasion to his audiences. Rubini would merely walk through a large portion of an opera with indifference, but, when his chosen moment arrived, there were such pa.s.sion, fervor, and putting forth of consummate vocal art and emotion that his hearers hung breathless on the notes of his voice. As the singer of a song in opera, no one, according to his contemporaries, ever equaled him. According to Chorley, his "songs did not so much create a success for him as an ecstasy of delight in those that heard him. The mixture of musical finish with excitement which they displayed has never been equaled within such limits or on such conditions as the career of Rubini afforded. He ruled the stage by the mere art of singing more completely than any one--man or woman--has been able to do in my time."
Rubini died in 1852, and left behind him one of the largest fortunes ever ama.s.sed on the stage.
Another member of the celebrated "Puritani" quartet was Signor Tamburini. His voice was a ba.s.s in quality, with a barytone range of two octaves, from F to F, rich, sweet, extensive, and even. His powers of execution were great, and the flexibility with which he used his voice could only be likened to the facility of a skillful "cello performer. He combined largeness of style, truth of accent, florid embellishment, and solidity. His acting, alike in tragedy and comedy, was spirited and judicious, though it lacked the irresistible strokes of spontaneous genius, the flashes of pa.s.sion, or rich drollery which made Lablache so grand an actor, or, in a later time, redeemed the vocal imperfections of Ronconi. An amusing instance of Taniburini"s vocal skill and wealth of artistic resources, displayed in his youth, was highly characteristic of the man. He was engaged at Palermo during the Carnival season of 1822, and on the last night the audience attended the theatre, inspired by the most riotous spirit of carnivalesque revelry. Large numbers of them came armed with drums, trumpets, shovels, tin pans, and other charivari instruments. Tamburini, finding himself utterly unable to make his ordinary _ba.s.so cantante_ tones heard amid this Saturnalian din, determined to sing his music in the falsetto, and so he commenced in the voice of a _soprano sfogato_. The audience were so amazed that they laid aside their implements of musical torture, and began to listen with amazement, which quickly changed to delight. Taniburini"s falsetto was of such purity, so flexible and precise in florid execution, that he was soon applauded enthusiastically. The cream of the joke, though, was yet to come. The poor prima donna was so enraged and disgusted by the horse-play of the audience that she fled from the theatre, and the poor manager was at his wit"s end, for the humor of the people was such that it was but a short step between rude humor and destructive rage.
Tamburini solved the problem ingeniously, for he donned the fugitive"s satin dress, clapped her bonnet over his wig, and appeared on the stage with a mincing step, just as the rioters, impatient at the delay, were about to carry the orchestral barricade by storm. Never was seen so unique a soprano, such enormous hands and feet. He courtesied, one hand on his heart, and pretended to wipe away tears of grat.i.tude with the other at the clamorous reception he got. He sang the soprano score admirably, burlesquing it, of course, but with marvelous expression and far greater powers of execution than the prima donna herself could have shown. The difficult problem to solve, however, was the duet singing.
But this Tamburini, too, accomplished, singing the part of _Elisa_ in falsetto, and that of the _Count_ in his own natural tones. This wonderful exhibition of artistic resources carried the opera to a triumphant close, amid the wild cheers of the audience, and probably saved the manager the loss of no little property.
But, greatest of all, perhaps the most wonderful artist among men that ever appeared in opera, was Lablache. Position and training did much for him, but an all-bounteous Nature had done more, for never in her most lavish moods did she more richly endow an artistic organization. Luigi Lablache was born at Naples, December 6, 1794, of mixed Irish and French parentage, and probably this strain of Hibernian blood was partly responsible for the rich drollery of his comic humor. Young Lablache was placed betimes in the Conservatorio della San Sebastiano, and studied the elements of music thoroughly, as his instruction covered not merely singing, but the piano, the violin, and violoncello. It is believed that, had his vocal endowments not been so great, he could have become a leading _virtuoso_ on any instrument he might have selected. Having at length completed his musical education, he was engaged at the age of eighteen as _buffo_ at the San Carlino theatre at Naples. Shortly after his _debut_, Lablache married Teresa Pinotti, the daughter of an eminent actor, and found in this auspicious union the most wholesome and powerful influence of his life. The young wife recognized the great genius of her husband, and speedily persuaded him to retire from such a narrow sphere. Lablache devoted a year to the serious study of singing, and to emanc.i.p.ating himself from the Neapolitan patois which up to this time had clung to him, after which he became primo ba.s.so at the Palermitan opera. He was now twenty, and his voice had become developed into that suave and richly toned organ, such as was never bestowed on another man, ranging two octaves from E flat below to E flat above the ba.s.s stave. An offer from the manager of La Scala, Milan, gratified his ambition, and he made his _debut_ in 1817 as Dandini in "La Cenerentola." His splendid singing and acting made him brilliantly successful; but Lablache was not content with this. His industry and attempts at improvement were incessant. In fact this singer was remarkable through life, not merely for his professional ambition, but the zeal with which he sought to enlarge his general stores of knowledge and culture. M. Scudo, in his agreeable recollections of Italian singers, informs us that at Naples Lablache had enjoyed the friendship and teaching of Mme. Mericoffre (a rich banker"s wife), known in Italy as La Cottellini, one of the finest artists of the golden age of Italian singing. Mme. Lablache, too, was a woman of genius in her way, and her husband owed much to her intelligent and watchful criticism.
The fume of Lablache speedily spread through Europe. He sang in all the leading Italian cities with equal success, and at Vienna, whither he went in 1824, his admirers presented him with a magnificent gold medal with a most flattering inscription.
He returned again to Naples after an absence of twelve years, and created a grand sensation at the San Carlo by his singing of _a.s.sur_, in "Semiramide." The Neapolitans loaded him with honors, and sought to retain him in his native city, but this "pent-up Utica" could not hold a man to whom the most splendid rewards of his profession were offering themselves. Lablache made his first appearance in London, in 1830, in "Il Matrimonio Segreto," and almost from his first note and first step he took an irresistible hold on the English public, which lasted for nearly a quarter of a century. It perplexed his admirers whether he was greater as a singer or as an actor. We are told that he "was gifted with personal beauty to a rare degree. A grander head was never more grandly set on human shoulders; and in his case time and the extraordinary and unwieldy corpulence which came with time seemed only to improve the Jupiter features, and to enhance their expression of majesty, or sweetness, or sorrow, or humor as the scene demanded." His very tall figure prevented his bulk from appearing too great. One of his boots would have made a small portmanteau, and one could have clad a child in one of his gloves. So great was his strength that as _Leporello_ he sometimes carried off under one arm a singer of large stature representing _Masetto_, and in rehearsal would often for exercise hold a double ba.s.s out at arm"s length. The force of his voice was so prodigious that he could make himself heard above any orchestral thunders or chorus, however gigantic. This power was rarely put forth, but at the right time and place it was made to peal out with a resistless volume, and his portentous notes rang through the house like the boom of a great bell. It was said that his wife was sometimes aroused at night by what appeared to be the fire tocsin, only to discover that it was her rec.u.mbent husband producing these bell-like sounds in his sleep. The vibratory power of his full voice was so great that it was dangerous for him to sing in a greenhouse.
Like so many of the foremost artists, Lablachc shone alike in comic and tragic parts. Though he sang successfully in all styles of music and covered a great dramatic versatility, the parts in which he was peculiarly great were _Leporello_ in "Don Giovanni"; the _Podesta_ in "La Gazza Ladra"; _Geronimo_ in "Il Matrimonio Segreto"; _Caliban_ in Halevy"s "Tempest"; _Gritzonko_ in "L"Etoile du Nord"; _Henry VIII_ in "Anna Bolena"; the _Doge_ in "Marino Faliero"; _Oroveso_ in "Norma"; and _a.s.sur_ in "Semiramide." In thus selecting certain characters as those in which Lablache was unapproachably great, it must be understood that he "touched nothing which he did not adorn." It has been frankly conceded even among the members of his own profession, where envy, calumny, and invidious sneers so often belittle the judgment, that Lablache never performed a character which he did not make more difficult for those that came after him, by elevating its ideal and grasping new possibilities in its conception.
Lablache sang in London and Paris for many years successively, and his fame grew to colonial proportions. In 1828 his terms were forty thousand francs and a benefit, for four months. A few years later, Laporte, of London, paid Robert, of Paris, as much money for the mere cession of his services for a short season. In 1852 when Lablachc had reached an age when most singers grow dull and mechanical, he created two new types, _Caliban_, in Halevy"s opera of "The Tempest," and _Gritzonko_, in "L"Etoile du Nord," with a vivacity, a stage knowledge, and a brilliancy of conception as rare as they were strongly marked. He was one of the thirty-two torch-bearers who followed Beethoven"s body to its interment, and he sung the solo part in "Mozart"s Requiem" at the funeral, as he had when a child sung the contralto part in the same ma.s.s at Hadyn"s obsequies. He was the recipient of orders and medals from nearly every sovereign in Europe. When he was thus honored by the Emperor of Russia in 1856, he used the prophetic words, "These will do to ornament my coffin." Two years afterward he died at Naples, January 23, 1858, whither he had gone to try the effects of the balmy climate of his native city on his failing health. His only daughter married Thalberg, the pianist. He was the singing master of Queen Victoria, and he is frequently mentioned in her published diaries and letters in terms of the strongest esteem and admiration. His death drew out expressions of profound sorrow from all parts of Europe, for it was felt that, in Lablache, the world of song had lost one of the greatest lights which had starred its brilliant record.
IV.
But of all the great men-singers with whom the Grisi was a.s.sociated no one was so intimately connected with her career as the tenor Mario.
Their art partnership was in later years followed by marriage, but it was well known that a pa.s.sionate and romantic attachment sprang up between these two gifted singers long before a dissolution of Grisi"s earlier union permitted their affection to be consecrated by the Church.
Mario, Conte di Candia, the scion of a n.o.ble family, was born at Genoa in 1812. His father had been a general in the army at Piedmont, and he himself at the time of his first visit to Paris in 1836 carried his sovereign"s commission. The fascinating young Italian officer was welcomed in the highest circles, for his splendid physical beauty, and his art-talents as an amateur in music, painting, and sculpture, separated him from all others, even in a throng of brilliant and accomplished men. He had often been told that he had a fortune in his voice, but his pride of birth had always restrained him from a career to which his own secret tastes inclined him, in spite of the fact that expensive tastes cooperated with a meager allowance from his father to plunge him deeply in debt. At last the moment of successful temptation came. Duponchel, the director of the Opera, made him a tempting offer, for good tenors were very difficult to secure then as in the later days of the stage.
The young Count Candia hesitated to sign his father"s name to a contract, but he finally compromised the matter at the house of the Comtesse de Merlin, where he was dining one night in company with Prince Belgiojoso and other musical amateurs, by signing only the Christian name, under which he afterward became famous, Mario. He spent a short season in studying under Michelet, Pouchard, and the great singing master, Bordogni, but there is no doubt that his singing was very imperfect when he made his _debut_, November 30, 1838, in the part of _Robert le Diable_. His princely beauty and delicious fresh voice, however, took the musical public by storm, and the common cry was that he would replace Kubini. For a year he remained at the Academie, but in 1840 pa.s.sed to the Italian Opera, for which his qualities more specially fitted him.
In the mean time he had made his first appearance before that public of which he continued to be a favorite for so many years. London first saw the new tenor in "Lucrezia Borgia," and was as cordial in its appreciation as Paris had been. A critic of the period, writing of him in later years, said: "The vocal command which he afterward gained was unthought of; his acting then did not get beyond that of a southern man with a strong feeling for the stage. But physical beauty and geniality, such as have been bestowed on few, a certain artistic taste, a certain distinction, not exclusively belonging to gentle birth, but sometimes a.s.sociated with it, made it clear from the first hour of Signor Mario"s stage life that a course of no common order of fascination had begun."
Mario sung after this each season in London and Paris for several years, without its falling to his lot to create any new important stage characters. When Donizetti produced "Don Pasquale" at the Theatre Italiens in 1843, Mario had the slight part of the lover. The reception at rehearsal was ominous, and, in spite of the beauty of the music, everybody prophesied a failure. The two directors trembled with dread of a financial disaster. The composer shrugged his shoulders, and taking the arm of his friend, M. Dermoy, the music publisher, left the theatre.
"They know nothing about the matter," he laughingly said; "I know what "Don Pasquale" needs. Come with me." On reaching his library at home, Donizetti unearthed from a pile of dusty ma.n.u.script tumbled under the piano what appeared to be a song. "Take that," he said to his friend, "to Mario at once that he may learn it without delay." This song was the far-famed "Com e gentil." The serenade was sung with a tambourine accompaniment played by Lablache himself, concealed from the audience.
The opera was a great success, no little of which was due to the neglected song which Donizetti had almost forgotten.
It was not till 1846 that Mario took the really exalted place by which he is remembered in his art, and which even the decadence of his vocal powers did not for a long time deprive him of. He never lost something amateurish, but this gave him a certain distinction and fine breeding of style, as of a gentleman who deigned to practice an art as a delightful accomplishment. Personal charm and grace, borne out by a voice of honeyed sweetness, fascinated the stern as well as the sentimental critic into forgetting all his deficiencies, and no one was disposed to reckon sharply with one so genially endowed with so much of the n.o.bleman in bearing, so much of the poet and painter in composition. To those who for the first time saw Mario play such parts as _Almaviva, Gennaro_, and _Raoul_, it was a new revelation, full of poetic feeling and sentiment. Here his unique supremacy was manifest. He will live in the world"s memory as the best opera lover ever seen, one who out of the insipidities and fustian of the average lyric drama could conjure up a conception steeped in the richest colors of youth, pa.s.sion, and tenderness, and strengthened by the atmosphere of stage verity. In such scenes as the fourth act of "Les Huguenots" and the last act of the "Favorita" Signor Mario"s singing and acting were never to be forgotten by those that witnessed them. Intense pa.s.sion and highly finished vocal delicacy combined to make these pictures of melodious suffering indelible.
As a singer of romances Mario has never been equaled. He could not execute those splendid songs of the Rossinian school, in which the feeling of the theme is expressed in a dazzling parade of roulades and fioriture, the songs in which Rubini was matchless. But in those songs where music tells the story of pa.s.sion in broad, intelligible, ardent phrases, and presents itself primarily as the vehicle of vehement emotion, Mario stood ahead of all others of his age, it may be said, indeed, of all within the memory of his age. It was for this reason that he attained such a supremacy also on the concert stage. The choicest songs of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Gordigiano, and Meyerbeer were interpreted by his art with an intelligence and poetry which gave them a new and more vivid meaning. The refinements of his accent and p.r.o.nunciation created the finest possible effects, and were perhaps partly due to the fact that before Mario became a public artist he was a gentleman and a n.o.ble, permeated by the best asthetic and social culture of his times.
Mario"s power ill.u.s.trated the value of tastes and pursuits collateral to those of his profession. The painter"s eye for color, the sculptor"s sense of form, as well as the lover"s honeyed tenderness, entered into the success of this charming tenor. His stage pictures looked as if they had stepped out of the canvases of t.i.tian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese. In no way was the artistic completeness of his temperament more happily shown than in the harmonious and beautiful figure he presented in his various characters; for there was a touch of poetry and proportion in them far beyond the possibilities of the stage costumer"s craft. Other singers had to sing for years, and overcome native defects by a.s.siduous labor, before reaching the goal of public favor, but "Signor Mario was a Hyperian born, who had only to be seen and heard, and the enchantment was complete." For a quarter of a century Mario remained before the public of Paris, London, and St. Petersburg, constantly a.s.sociated with Mme. Grisi.
V.
To return once more to the consideration of Grisi"s splendid career.
The London season of 1839 was remarkable for the production of "Lucrezia Borgia." The character of the "Borgia woman" afforded a sphere in which our prima donna"s talents shone with peculiar l.u.s.ter. The impa.s.sioned tenderness of her _Desdemona_, the soft sweetness of "love in its melancholy and in its regrets" of _Anna Bolena_, the fiery ardor and vehemence of _Norma_, had been powerfully expressed by her, but the mixture of savage cruelty and maternal intensity characteristic of _Lucretia_ was embodied with a splendor of color and a subtilty of ideal which deservedly raised her estimate as a tragedienne higher than before. Without pa.s.sing into unnecessary detail, it is enough to state that Mme. Grisi was constantly before the publics of London and Paris in her well-established characters for successive years, with an ever-growing reputation. In 1847 the memorable operatic schism occurred which led to the formation of the Royal Italian Opera at Convent Garden.
The princ.i.p.al members of the company who seceded from Her Majesty"s Theatre were Mmes. Grisi and Persiani, Signor Mario, and Signor Tamburini. The new establishment was also strengthened by the accession of several new performers, among whom was Mlle. Alboni, the great contralto. "Her Majesty"s" secured the possession of Jenny Lind, who became the great support of the old house, as Grisi was of the new one. The appearance of Mme. Grisi as the a.s.syrian Queen and Alboni as _Arsace_ thronged the vast theatre to the very doors, and produced a great excitement on the opening night. The subject of our sketch remained faithful to this theatre to the very last, and was on its boards when she took her farewell of the English public. The change broke up the celebrated quartet. It struggled on in the shape of a trio for some time without Lablache, and was finally diminished to Grisi and Mario, who continued to sing the _duo concertante_ in "Don Pasquale," as none others could. They were still the "rose and nightingale" whom Heine immortalizes in his "Lutetia," "the rose the nightingale among flowers, the nightingale the rose among birds." That airy dilettante, N. P.
Willis, in his "Pencilings by the Way," pa.s.ses Grisi by with faint praise, but the ardent admiration of Heine could well compensate her wounded vanity, if, indeed, she felt the blunt arrow-point of the American traveler.
A visit to St. Petersburg in 1851, in company with Mario, was the occasion of a vast amount of enthusiasm among the music-loving Russians.
During her performance in "Lucrezia Borgia," on her benefit night, she was recalled twenty times, and presented by the Czar with a magnificent Cashmere shawl worth four thousand rubles, a tiara of diamonds and pearls, and a ring of great value. From the year 1834, when she first appeared in London, till 1861, when she finally retired, Grisi missed but one season in London, and but three in Paris. Her splendid physique enabled her to endure the exhaustive wear and friction of an operatic life with but little deterioration of her powers. When she made her artistic tour through the United States with Mario in 1854, her voice had perhaps begun to show some slight indication of decadence, but her powers were of still mature and mellow splendor. Prior to crossing the ocean a series of "farewell performances" was given. The operas in which she appeared included "Norma," "Lucrezia Borgia," "Don Pasquale," "Gli Ugonotti," "La Favorita." The first was "Norma," Mme. Grisi performing _Norma_; Mlle. Maria, _Adalgiza_; Tamberlik, _Pollio_; and La-blache, _Oroveso_; the last performance consisted of the first act of "Norma,"
and the three first acts of "Gli Ugonotti," in which Mario sustained the princ.i.p.al tenor part. "Rarely, in her best days," said one critic, "had Grisi been heard with greater effect, and never were her talents as an actress more conspicuously displayed." At the conclusion of the performance the departing singer received an ovation. Bouquets were flung in profusion, vociferous applause rang through the theatre, and when she reappeared the whole house rose. The emotion which was evinced by her admirers was evidently shared by herself.
The American engagement of Grisi and Mario under Mr. Hackett was very successful, the first appearance occurring at Castle Garden, August 18, 1854. The seventy performances given throughout the leading cities are still a delightful reminiscence among old amateurs, in spite of the great singers who have since visited this country and the more stable footing of Italian opera in later times. Mr. Hackett paid the two artists eighty-five thousand dollars for a six months" tour, and declared, at a public banquet he gave them at the close of the season, that his own profits had been sixty thousand dollars. Mme. Grisi had intended to retire permanently when she was still in the full strength of her great powers, but she was persuaded to reappear before the London public on her return from New York. It became evident that her voice was beginning to fail rapidly, and that she supplied her vocal shortcomings by dramatic energy. She continued to sing in opera in various parts of Europe, but the public applause was evidently rather a struggle on the part of her audiences to pay tribute to a great name than a spontaneous expression of pleasure, and at Madrid she was even hissed in the presence of the royal court, which gave a special significance to the occasion. Mr. Gye, of the Royal Italian Opera in London, in 1861 made a contract with her not to appear on the stage again for five years, evidently a.s.suming that five years were as good as fifty. But it was hard for the great singer, who had been the idol of the public for more than a quarter of a century, to quit the scene of her splendid triumphs.
So in 1866 she again essayed to tread the stage as a lyric queen, in the _role_ of _Lucrezia_, but the result was a failure. It is not pleasant to record these spasmodic struggles of a failing artist, tenacious of that past which had now shut its gates on her for ever and a day. Her career was ended, but she had left behind a name of imperishable l.u.s.ter in the annals of her art. She died of inflammation of the lungs during a visit to Berlin, November 25, 1869. Her husband, Mario, retired from the stage in 1867, and suffered, it is said, at the last from pecuniary reverses, in spite of the fact that he had earned such enormous sums during his operatic career. His concert tour in the United States, under the management of Max Strakosch, in 1871-"72. is remembered only with a feeling of pain. It was the exhibition of a magnificent wreck. The touch of the great artist was everywhere visible, but the voice was utterly lost. Signor Mario is still living at Rome, and has resumed the rank which he laid aside to enter a stage career.
Grisi united much of the n.o.bleness and tragic inspiration of Pasta with something of the fire and energy of Malibran, but in the minds of the most capable judges she lacked the creative originality which stamped each of the former two artists. She was remarkable for the cleverness with which she adopted the effects and ideas of those more thoughtful and inventive than herself. Her _Norma_ was ostentatiously modeled on that of Pasta. Her acting showed less the exercise of reflection and study than the rich, uncultivated, imperious nature of a most beautiful and adroit southern woman. But her dramatic instincts were so strong and vehement that they lent something of her own personality to the copy of another"s creation. When to this engrossing energy were added the most dazzling personal charms and a voice which as nearly reached perfection as any ever bestowed on a singer, it is no marvel that a continual succession of brilliant rivals was unable to dispute her long reign over the public heart.
PAULINE VIARDOT.
Vicissitudes of the Garcia Family.--Pauline Viardot"s Early Training.--Indications of her Musical Genius.--She becomes a Pupil of Liszt on the Piano.--Pauline Garcia practically self-trained as a Vocalist.--Her Remarkable Accomplishments.--Her First Appearance before the Public with De Beriot in Concert.--She makes her _Debut_ in London as _Desdemona_.--Contemporary Opinions of her Powers.--Description of Pauline Garcia"s Voice and the Character of her Art.--The Originality of her Genius.--Pauline Garcia marries M. Viardot, a Well-known _Litterateur_.--A Tour through Southern Europe.--She creates a Distinct Place for herself in the Musical Art.--Great Enthusiasm in Germany over her Singing.--The Richness of her Art Resources.--Sketches of the Tenors, Nourrit and Duprez, and of the Great Barytone, Ronconi.--Mine.
Viardot and the Music of Meyerbeer.--Her Creation of the Part of _Fides_ in "Le Prophete," the Crowning Work of a Great Career.--Retirement from the Stage.--High Position in Private Life.--Connection with the French Conservatoire.
I.
The genius of the Garcia family flowered not less in Mme. Malibran"s younger sister than in her own brilliant and admired self. Pauline, the second daughter of Manuel Garcia, was thirteen years the junior of her sister, and born at Paris, July 18, 1821. The child had for sponsors at baptism the celebrated Ferdinand Paer, the composer, and the Princess Pauline Prascovie Galitzin, a distinguished Russian lady, noted for her musical amateurship, and the full name given was Mich.e.l.le Ferdinandie Pauline. The little girl was only three years old when her sister Maria made her _debut_ in London, and even then she lisped the airs she heard sung by her sister and her father with something like musical intelligence, and showed that the hereditary gift was deeply rooted in her own organization.
Manuel Garcia"s project for establishing Italian opera in America and the disastrous crash in which it ended have already been described in an earlier chapter. Maria, who had become Mme. Malibran, was left in New York, while the rest of the Garcia family sailed for Mexico, to give a series of operatic performances in that ancient city. The precocious genius of Pauline developed rapidly. She learned in Mexico to play on the organ and piano as if by instinct, with so much ease did she master the difficulties of these instruments, and it was her father"s proud boast that never, except in the cases of a few of the greatest composers, had apt.i.tude for the musical art been so convincingly displayed at her early years. At the age of six Pauline Garcia could speak four languages, French, Spanish, Italian, and English, with facility, and to these she afterward added German. Her pa.s.sion for acquirement was ardent and never lost its force, for she was not only an indefatigable student in music, but extended her researches and attainments in directions alien to the ordinary tastes of even brilliant women. It is said that before she had reached the age of eight-and-twenty, she had learned to read Latin and Greek with facility, and made herself more than pa.s.sably acquainted with various arts and sciences. To the indomitable will and perseverance of her sister Maria, she added a docility and gentleness to which the elder daughter of Garcia had been a stranger. Pauline was a favorite of her father, who had used pitiless severity in training the brilliant and willful Maria.
"Pauline can be guided by a thread of silk," he would say, "but Maria needs a hand of iron."
Garcia"s operatic performances in Mexico were very successful up to the breaking out of the civil war consequent on revolt from Spain. Society was so utterly disturbed by this catastrophe that residence in Mexico became alike unsafe and profitless, and the Spanish musician resolved to return to Europe. He turned his money into ingots of gold and silver, and started, with his little family, across the mountains interposing between the capital and the seaport of Vera Cruz, a region at that period terribly infested with brigands. Garcia was not lucky enough to escape these outlaws. They pounced on the little cavalcade, and the hard-earned wealth of the singer, amounting to nearly a hundred thousand dollars, pa.s.sed out of his possession in a twinkling. The cruel humor of the chief of the banditti bound Garcia to a tree, after he had been stripped naked, and as it was known that he was a singer he was commanded to display his art for the pleasure of these strange auditors.
For a while the despoiled man sternly refused, though threatened with immediate death. At last he began an aria, but his voice was so choked by his rage and agitation that he broke down, at which the robber connoisseurs hissed. This stung Garcia"s pride, and he began again with a haughty gesture, breaking forth into a magnificent flight of song, which delighted his hearers, and they shouted "_Bravissimo!_" with all the _abandon_ of an enthusiastic Italian audience. A flash of chivalry animated the rude hearts of the brigands, for they restored to Garcia all his personal effects, and a liberal share of the wealth which they had confiscated, and gave him an escort to the coast as a protection against other knights of the road. The reader will hardly fail to recall a similar adventure which befell Salvator Rosa, the great painter, who not only earned immunity, but gained the enthusiastic admiration of a band of brigands, by whom he had been captured, through a display of his art.
The talent of Pauline Garcia for the piano was so remarkable that it was for some time the purpose of her father to devote her to this musical specialty. She was barely more than seven on the return of the Garcias to Europe, and she was placed, without delay, under the care of a celebrated teacher, Meysenberg of Paris. Three years later she was transferred to the instruction of Franz Liszt, of whom she became one of the most distinguished pupils. Liszt believed that his young scholar had the ability to become one of the greatest pianists of the age, and was urgent that she should devote herself to this branch of the musical art. Her health, however, was not equal to the unremitting sedentary confinement of piano practice, though she attained a degree of skill which enabled her to play with much success as a solo performer at the concerts of her sister Maria. Her voice had also developed remarkable quality during the time when she was devoting her energies in another direction, and her proud father was wont to say, whenever a buzz of ecstatic pleasure over the singing of Mme. Malibran met his ear, "There is a younger sister who is a greater genius than she." It is more than probable that Pauline Garcia, as a singer, owed an inestimable debt to Pauline Garcia as a player, and that her accuracy and brilliancy of musical method were, in large measure, the outcome of her training under the king of modern pianists.
Manuel Garcia died when Pauline was but eleven years old, and the question of her daughter"s further musical education was left to Mme.
Garcia. The celebrated tenor singer, Adolphe Nourrit, one of the famous lights of the French stage, who had been a favorite pupil of Garcia, showed great kindness to the widow and her daughter. Anxious to promote the interests of the young girl, he proposed that she should take lessons from Eossini, and that great _maestro_ consented. Nourrit"s delight at this piece of good luck, however, was quickly checked. Mme.
Garcia firmly declined, and said that if her son Manuel could not come to her from Rome for the purpose of training Pauline"s voice, she herself was equal to the task, knowing the principles on which the Garcia school of the voice was founded. The systems of Rossini and Garcia were radically different, the one stopping at florid grace of vocalization, while the other aimed at a radical and profound culture of all the resources of the voice.
It may be said, however, that Pauline Garcia was self-educated as a vocalist. Her mother"s removal to Brussels, her brother"s absence in Italy, and the wandering life of Mme. Malibran practically threw her on her own resources. She was admirably fitted for self-culture. Ardent, resolute, industrious, thoroughly grounded in the soundest of art methods, and marvelously gifted in musical intelligence, she applied herself to her vocal studies with abounding enthusiasm, without instruction other than the judicious counsels of her mother. She had her eyes fixed on a great goal, and this she pursued without rest or turning from her path. She exhausted the _solfeggi_ which her father had written out for her sister Maria, and when this laborious discipline was done she determined to compose others for herself. She had already learned harmony and counterpoint from Reicha at the Paris Conservatoire, and these she now found occasion to put in practice. She copied all the melodies of Schubert, of whom she was a pa.s.sionate admirer, and thought no toil too great which promoted her musical growth. Her labor was a labor of love, and all the ardor of her nature was poured into it. Music was not the sole accomplishment in which she became skilled. Una.s.sisted by teaching, she, like Malibran, learned to sketch and paint in oil and water-colors, and found many spare moments in the midst of an incessant art-training, which looked to the lyric stage, to devote to literature.
All this denotes a remarkable nature, fit to overcome every difficulty and rise to the topmost shining peaks of artistic greatness. What she did our sketch will further relate.
II.
Pauline Garcia was just sixteen when, panting with an irrepressible sense of her own powers, she exclaimed, "_Ed io anclu son cantatrice_."
Her first public appearance was worthy of the great name she afterward won. It was at a concert given in Brussels, on December 15, 1837, for the benefit of a charity, and De Beriot made his first appearance on this occasion after the death of Mme. Malibran. The court and most distinguished people of Belgium were present on this occasion, and so great was the impression made on musicians that the Philharmonic Society caused two medals to be struck for De Beriot and Mlle. Garcia, the mold of which was broken immediately. Pauline Garcia, in company with De Beriot, gave a series of concerts through Belgium and Germany, and it soon became evident that a new star of the first magnitude was rising in the musical firmament. In Germany many splendid gifts were showered on her. The Queen of Prussia sent her a superb suite of emeralds, and Mme.
Sontag, with whom she sang at Frankfort, gave the young cantatrice a valuable testimonial, which was alike an expression of her admiration of Pauline Garcia and a memento of her regard for the name of the great Malibran, whose pa.s.sionate strains had hardly ceased lingering in the ears of Europe. Paris first gathered its musical forces to hear the new singer at the Theatre de la Renaissance, December 15, 1838, eager to compare her with Malibran. Among other numbers on the concert programme, she gave a very difficult air by Costa, which had been a favorite song of her sister"s, an _aria bravura_ by De Beriot, and the "Cadence du Diable," imitated from "Tartini"s Dream," which she accompanied with marvelous skill and delicacy. She shortly appeared again, and she was supported by Rubini, Lablache, and Ivanhoff. The Parisian critics recognized the precision, boldness, and brilliancy of her musical style in the most unstinted expressions of praise. But England was the country selected by her for the theatrical _debut_ toward which her ambition burned--England, which dearly loved the name of Garcia, so resplendent in the art-career of Mme. Malibran.
Her appearance in the London world was under peculiar conditions, which, while they would enhance the greatness of success, would be almost certainly fatal to anything short of the highest order of ability. The meteoric l.u.s.ter of Mali-bran"s dazzling career was still fresh in the eyes of the public. The Italian stage was filled by Mme. Grisi, who, in personal beauty and voice, was held nearly matchless, and had an established hold on the public favor. Another great singer, Mme.
Persiani, reigned through the incomparable finish of her vocalization, and the musical world of London was full of distinguished artists, whose names have stood firm as landmarks in the art. The new Garcia, who dashed so boldly into the lists, was a young, untried, inexperienced girl, who had never yet appeared in opera. One can fancy the excitement and curiosity when Pauline stepped before the footlights of the King"s Theatre, May 9, 1839, as _Desdemona_ in "Otello," which had been the vehicle of Malibran"s first introduction to the English public. The reminiscence of an eminent critic, who was present, will be interesting.
"Nothing stranger, more incomplete in its completeness, more unspeakably indicating a new and masterful artist can be recorded than that first appearance. She looked older than her years; her frame (then a mere reed) quivered this way and that; her character dress seemed to puzzle her, and the motion of her hands as much. Her voice was hardly settled even within its own after conditions; and yet, juaradoxical as it may seem, she was at ease on the stage; because she brought thither instinct for acting, experience of music, knowledge how to sing, and consummate intelligence. There could be no doubt, with any one who saw that _Desdemona_ on that night, that another great career was begun.... All the Malibran fire, courage, and accomplishment were in it, and (some of us fancied) something more beside."