George T. Ferris - Great Singers, Second Series

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He returned again to Naples after an absence of twelve years, and
created a grand sensation at the San Carlo by his singing of _Assur_,
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 bass 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 recumbent 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 _Assur_ 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 mass 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 associated
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 passionate 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 noble 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 passed 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
associated 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 manuscript 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 nobleman
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, passion, 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 passion 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 passion 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
pronunciation 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 noble, permeated by the best asthetic and social culture
of his times.

Mario's power illustrated 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 Titian, 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 assiduous 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 associated 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 luster. The impassioned
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 passing 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 principal 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 Assyrian 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," passes 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
principal 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 assuming 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 luster
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 nobleness 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 Michelle 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 aptitude 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 passion 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 passably 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, passed 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.

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