Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 95.djvu/255

Rh burini, and Ronconi! Yet we know it was Rubini, long the tenor idol of Paris, who introduced into the art of song the trick called the vibrato, without which no well-regulated singer now regards himself as properly equipped. The vibrato is the mother of the tremolo, that pernicious vice which leads to so much tawdry sentiment and such a wilderness of singing out of tune.

If, however, we are to believe the enthusiastic accounts of contemporaries and the memories of very wise old men, these singers had as much technical skill as the princes of Handel’s day, together with much more emotional warmth. Certainly the music which they sang, and which few singers of to-day can deliver beautifully, is in itself evidence of the extraordinary development of their powers. The numbers of Norma are not for any singer but one capable of hurling into an auditorium with perfect freedom the measures of Weber’s “Ocean, thou mighty monster,” a dramatic scena of the most exacting sort, and only to be well sung by a great singer.

But it was not in works of this sort that the famous singers of the early thirties and forties at the Italiens in Paris and at the opera in London made their fame. Grisi was indeed hailed as the successor of Pasta, but it was in Anna Bolena that she succeeded her. In this now forgotten opera of Donizetti the great quartet, Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and Lablache, set London afire. It was for this quartet that Bellini in 1835 composed I Puritani, and when Rubini retired, Mario succeeded to his place in the quartet, and with it created Donizetti’s exquisite comic opera, Don Pasquale.

Grisi was the queen of the operatic circle. Her voice was described by the London Times as “a pure, brilliant, powerful, flexible soprano.” It was conceded to be one of the finest ever heard. “As an actress Mlle. Grisi exhibits discriminative powers of no common order,” said the Thunderer. This does not sound extravagant, yet Grisi’s praises have not ceased to echo down the corridors of operatic history.

More enthusiastic are some of the accounts of Lablache. His bass voice is said to have equaled his enormous physical strength, which was so great that he could hold a double bass viol at arm’s length. Yet he roared gently on most occasions, and used his thunders only when art demanded that he should. He was huge of frame, and was as clever in comedy as in tragedy. His Leporello has never been surpassed. What a Wotan he would have made! Tamburini was a handsome, graceful fellow with a smooth, liquid voice of two octaves, and a facility of execution in florid music which would make any contemporaneous baritone stare. Those were the days of Rossini’s popularity, we must remember, and every one, from the soprano down to the bass, had to sing roulades.

But perhaps the best understanding of the vocal art of the period may be gathered from the comments upon Rubini. He had a chest register running from E of the bass clef to high B, and his falsetto went on to the high F. He used the head tones too much, but the public liked to hear them. He could pass from one register to the other so that no one could detect the change. “Gifted with immense lungs,” said Escudier, “he can so control his breath as never to expend more of it than is 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. In this manner he can deliver the longest and most drawn out phrases without any solution of continuity.”

His appearance was not good, and he was awkward. He was no actor at all, and his recitative was poor. In ensembles he never opened his mouth to sing. He would walk through a third of an opera, only to sing like a veritable demigod when his great aria was reached. Then he poured forth his splendid voice, his passionate delivery, his new and