Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/202

 own ideas not only realised, but, it may be, glorified. During the whole composition of 'Il Pirata,' Rubini stayed with Bellini, singing each song as it was finished. To this fortunate companionship it cannot be doubted that we owe 'La Sonnambula' and 'I Puritani.' Donizetti, again, achieved no great success until the production of 'Anna Bolena,' his thirty-second opera, in which the tenor part was written expressly for Rubini, who achieved in it some of his greatest triumphs. It was followed by 'Lucia,' 'Lucrezia,' 'Marino Faliero,' and others, in which a like inspiration was followed by the same result.

Rubini first came to England in 1831, when freed from his engagement with Barbaja, and from that time till 1843 he divided each year between Paris and this country, singing much at concerts and provincial festivals, as well as at the Opera, and creating a furore wherever he went.

His voice—more sweet than 'robust,' save on the rare occasions when he put forth his full power—extended from E of the bass clef to B of the treble, in chest notes, besides commanding a falsetto register as far as F or even G above that. A master of every kind of florid execution, and delighting at times in its display no one seems ever to have equalled him when he turned these powers into the channel of emotional vocal expression, nor to have produced so magical an effect by the singing of a simple, pathetic melody, without ornament of any kind soever. He indulged too much in the use of head-voice, but 'so perfect is his art,' says Escudier, writing at the time, 'that the transition from one register to the other is imperceptible to the hearer.… Gifted with immense lungs, he can so control his breath as never to expend more of it than is absolutely necessary for producing the exact degree of sound he wishes. So adroitly does he conceal the artifice of respiration that it is impossible to discover when his breath renews itself, inspiration and expiration being apparently simultaneous, as if one were to fill a cup with one hand while emptying it with the other. In this manner he can deliver the longest and most drawn-out phrases without any solution of continuity.' His stage appearance was not imposing, for his figure was short and awkward, his features plain and marked with small-pox. He was no actor, and seems rarely to have even tried to act. His declamation of recitative left something to be desired. 'In concerted pieces he does not give himself the trouble of singing at all, and if he goes as far as to open his mouth, it is only to preserve the most absolute silence.' (Escudier.) 'He would walk through a good third of an opera languidly, giving the notes correctly and little more,—in a duet blending his voice intimately with that of his partner (in this he was unsurpassed); but when his own moment arrived there was no longer coldness or hesitation, but a passion, a fervour, a putting forth to the utmost of every resource of consummate vocal art and emotion, which converted the most incredulous, and satisfied those till then inclined to treat him as one whose reputation had been overrated.' (Chorley.) Some of his greatest effects were produced by an excessive use of strong contrasts between piano and forte, 'which in the last years of his reign degenerated into the alternation of a scarcely-audible whisper and a shout.' He was the earliest to use that thrill of the voice known as the vibrato (with the subsequent abuse of which we are all of us too familiar), at first as a means of emotional effect, afterwards to conceal the deterioration of the organ. To him too was originally due that species of musical sob produced by the repercussion of a prolonged note before the final cadence, which, electrifying at first as a new effect, has become one of the commonest of vocal vulgarisms. But such was his perfection of finish, such the beauty of his expression, such his thorough identification of himself, not with his dramatic impersonations but with his songs, that his hold on the public remained unweakened to the last, even when his voice was a wreck and his peculiarities had become mannerisms. He has had one great successor, very different from himself, in some of his principal parts, and numberless imitators, but no rival in the art of gathering up and expressing in one song the varied emotions of a whole opera, and to this may be due the fact that he was as much worshipped, and is as affectionately remembered by numbers who never set foot in a theatre as by the most constant of opera-goers.

In 1843 he started with Liszt on a tour through Holland and Germany, but the two separated at Berlin, and Rubini went on alone to St. Petersburg, where he created an enthusiasm verging on frenzy. By his first concert alone he realised 54,000 francs. The Emperor Nicholas made him 'Director of Singing' in the Russian dominions, and a colonel into the bargain.

In the summer of this year Rubini went to Italy, giving some representations at Vienna by the way. He returned to Russia in the winter of 1844, but finding his voice permanently affected by the climate resolved to retire from public life. He bought a property near Romano, where he passed his last years, and died, on March 3, 1854, leaving behind him one of the largest fortunes ever amassed on the operatic stage, which, unlike too many of his brother artists, he had not squandered. He seems to have been a simple, kindly-natured man, and letters of his, still extant, show that he was ready and willing to assist needy compatriots.

His imitators have brought discredit on their great original, among those who never heard him, by aping and exaggerating his mannerisms without recalling his genius, so that his name is associated with an impure and corrupt style of vocalisation. This has helped, among other influences, in bringing about the twofold reaction, in composers as well as singers, in favour of dramatic opera, and of vocal declamation rather than singing, in the sense in which that word would have been understood by Rubini. [ F. A. M ] 