Great Singers: Maria Felicia Malibran. Wilhelmina Schröder-Devrient. Giulia Grisi. Pauline Viardot. Fanny Persiani. Marietta Alboni. Jenny Lind. Sophie Cruvelli. Theresa TitiensD. Appleton, 1889 - Singers |
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acting admiration Alboni Anna Bolena appeared applause artist audience Barbiere beauty Bellini Bériot Berlin brilliant cantatrice career character charming composer concert contralto critic daughter début delight Desdemona Don Giovanni Don Pasquale Donizetti Donna dramatic engagement English enthusiasm excitement execution expression fascinating favorite Fidelio fioriture French gave genius German gifts Giulia Giulia Grisi grace grand Grisi heard heart impression Italian Opera Jenny Lind Lablache Les Huguenots Lind's London Lucrezia Borgia lyric stage Malibran manager Maria Mario ment Meyerbeer Milan Mlle Naples ness never night Norma Nourrit Otello Paris passion Pasta Pauline Garcia Pauline Viardot perfect performance Persiani Puritani retired Robert le Diable rôle Rossini Rubini sang scene Schröder Schröder-Devrient season Semiramide Signor sing singer sister song Sontag soprano splendid style success Swedish sweetness Tacchinardi talent Tamburini tenor theatre thousand tion Titiens tones tour Viardot Vienna vocal vocalist voice woman young singer
Popular passages
Page 186 - mezzo voice' was delightful. In the night-scene where Agatha, seeing her lover coming, breathes out her joy in rapturous song, our young singer, on turning from the window at the back of the stage to the spectators again, was pale for joy; and in that pale joyousness she sang with a burst of outflowing love and life that called forth not the mirth, but the tears of the auditors.
Page 192 - I will be better qualified than I am when I again come to Copenhagen." On the stage she was the great artiste who rose above all those around her ; at home, in her own chamber, a sensitive young girl with all the humility and piety of a child. Her appearance in Copenhagen made an epoch in the history of our opera ; it showed me art in its sanctity ; I had beheld one of its vestals. She...
Page 206 - Her voice is a pure soprano — of the fullest compass belonging to voices of this • class, and of such evenness of tone that the nicest ear can discover no difference of quality from the bottom to the summit of the scale. In the great extent between A below the lines and D in alt she executes every description of passage, whether consisting of notes ' in linked sweetness long drawn out,' or of the most rapid flights and fiorituri, with equal facility and perfection.
Page 61 - She was a pale woman ; her face, a thoroughly German one, though plain, was pleasing, from the intensity of expression which her large features and deep tender eyes conveyed. She had profuse fair hair, the value of which she thoroughly understood, delighting, in moments of great emotion, to fling it loose with the wild vehemence of a Maenad. Her figure was superb though full, and she rejoiced in its display.
Page 99 - 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.
Page 118 - 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...
Page 131 - Duprez at his expense, that his friends feared for his sanity, a dread which was ominously realized in Italy two years afterward, where Nourrit was then singing. Though he was very warmly welcomed by the Italians, his morbid sensibility took offense at Naples at what he fancied was an unfavorable opinion of his Pollio in "Norma." His excitement resulted in delirium, and he threw himself from his bedroom window on the paved court-yard below, which resulted in instant death. Nourrit was the intimate...
Page 24 - Zingarelli — characters as different from each other as can well be imagined : and two of them, moreover, among the masterpieces of Pasta. It was remarked by a French critic, that " if Malibran must yield the palm to Pasta in point of acting, yet she possesses a decided superiority in respect to song.
Page 41 - But her grand triumph of all was on the night when she took her leave of the Neapolitan audience in the character of Ninetta. Nothing can be imagined finer than the spectacle afforded by the immense theatre of San Carlo, crowded to the very ceiling and ringing with acclamations.
Page 244 - Norma, in which the German singer may challenge comparison with the Italian, and in which she occasionally surpasses her. In the French and German...