Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 95.djvu/256

248 startling vibrato, his equally novel and affecting sob in the closing cadence,—hear Caruso do it,—till the most critical lost their judgment and acclaimed him a master of art. So indeed he was, but he was an aria singer pure and simple. He cared nothing for dramatic impersonation, and waited always for the supreme vocal moment. At any rate, that is the opinion of Chorley, who was, taking him all in all, the most observant critic of that period.

Mario, the idol of London, the adored of all womankind, was surely not so great a singer as Rubini, but he was a finer operatic artist. He was the perfection of theatrical grace, and he had an unmistakably fervent temper, which inspired his best scenes with communicative ardor. He was a master of the art of dress, and he always presented to the eye a delighting picture. As Chorley said, he was “the most perfect stage lover ever seen whatever may have been his other qualities or defects.” ‘The same commentator notes that he was a great Raoul in Les Huguenots, and that in the fourth act he rose to the full requirements of the masterly duet.

Throughout all the accounts of these singers of the elder days, one finds chiefly consideration of purely technical perfections. If behind the finish of the art of delivering the notes and phrases there lay a warmth of temperament or a grace of natural manner, well and good; but you may search in vain for any study of the intellectual attributes of these princes of the operatic stage. The era of philosophical music had not yet arrived. Sublimated sentiment was about the highest achievement of operatic composition, and the old sovereignty of musical forms, which made the librettist a servitor of the composer, had not ceased.

The great revolution in operatic art was brought about by the radical reforms of Wagner. When his sensational theories, demonstrated in his equally sensational works, spread through Europe, singers were called upon to study new problems. The proposition that the drama was the thing, and that the music was simply a means of expressing the poet’s thought, was in itself sufficient to startle operatic Europe, and it did. It is needless now to describe the battle that was waged over this theory. The fight is over, and even the modern Italians accept the Wagnerian theory up to that point. The result of the spread of Wagnerian ideas has been the development in the last quarter of a century of a new school of singers. I do not mean the Wagnerian singers of the early sort, for they were not singers at all, except in a few brilliant instances. They were declaimers and singing actors, whose vocal powers were imperfect, but whose dramatic temperaments and intelligence enabled them to affect their public powerfully. The new school of singers is that of which Jean de Reszke is the supreme master, and of which Lillian Nordica, Lili Lehmann, Edouard de Reszke, Delmas, Renaud, and a few others, are the leading members. There is little room for doubt that these singers would make an inferior showing in pure technical brilliancy as compared to the singers of the epoch of Farinelli.

Their entire schooling has been directed to a different end. They have not sought to stand still and amaze audiences by the mere beauty of their tone, the polish of their delivery, the length of their phrases, the exquisite finish of their sentiment. The emission of tone has been with them a means, not an end. It is one of their interpretative materials. Hand in hand with it go clear enunciation of the text, phrasing which sets forth not simply musical beauty, but the significance of the poetic lines, verbal emphasis utilized as carefully as in speech, dramatic expression designed on lines closely resembling those of elocution rather than song. Furthermore, action of the most imposing and delineative sort is demanded by the methods of this school.

The question may well be raised, then, whether the greatest dramatic singers of