History of the Opera from its Origin in Italy to the present Time Part 22

"It is well known," he says, "that her voice is of a most uncommon quality, and capable of exertions almost supernatural. Her throat seems endued (as has been remarked by medical men) with a power of expansion and muscular motion by no means usual, and when she throws out all her voice to the utmost, it has a volume and strength that are quite surprising, while its agility in divisions, running up and down the scale in semi-tones, and its compa.s.s in jumping over two octaves at once, are equally astonis.h.i.+ng. It were to be wished she was less lavish in the display of these wonderful powers, and sought to please more than to surprise; but her taste is vicious, her excessive love of ornament spoiling every simple air, and her greatest delight (indeed her chief merit) being in songs of a bold and spirited character, where much is left to her discretion (or indiscretion) without being confined by accompaniment, but in which she can indulge in _ad libitum_ pa.s.sages with a luxuriance and redundancy no other singer ever possessed, or if possessing, ever practised, and which she carries to a fantastical excess. She is fond of singing variations on some known simple air, and latterly has pushed this taste to the very height of absurdity, by singing, even without words, variations composed for the fiddle."

Allusion is here doubtless made to the _air varie_ by Pierre Rode, the violinist, which, from Catalani to Alboni and our own Louisa Pyne, has been such a favourite show-piece with all vocalists of brilliant executive powers, more especially in England. The vocal variations on Rode's air, however, were written in London, specially for Catalani, by Drouet the flute-player.

Catalani returned to Paris in October, 1815, when there was no longer any chance of Napoleon reproaching her for her abrupt departure nine years before. She solicited and obtained the "privilege" of the Italian theatre; but here the celebrated system of her husband, M. Valabreque (in which the best possible operatic company consisted only of _ma femme et trois ou quatre poupees_) quite broke down. Madame Catalani gave up the theatre, with the subvention of 160,000 francs allowed her by the government, in 1818, M. Valabreque having previously enunciated in a pamphlet the reasons which led to this abandonment. Great expenses had been incurred in fitting up the theatre, and, moreover, the management had been forced to pay its rent. The pamphlet concluded with a paragraph which was scarcely civil on the part of a foreigner who had been most hospitably received, towards a nation situated as France was just then.

It is sufficiently curious to be quoted.

[Sidenote: M. VALABREQUE.]

"Consider, moreover," said the discomforted director, or rather the discomforted husband of the directress, "that in the time when several provinces beyond the mountains belonged to France, twenty thousand Italians were constantly attracted to the capital and supplied numerous audiences for the Italian theatre; that, moreover, the artists who were chiefly remarked at the theatres of Milan, Florence, Venice and Genoa, could be engaged for Paris by order of the government, and that in such a case the administration was reimbursed for a portion of the extra engagements."

Catalani had left the King's Theatre in 1813, two years before she a.s.sumed the management of the Italian Theatre of Paris. With some brief intervals she had been singing in London since 1806, and after quitting England, she was for many years without appearing on any stage, if we except the short period during which she directed the Theatre Feydau.

Her terms were so inordinate that managers were naturally afraid of them, and Catalani found it more to her advantage to travel about Europe, giving concerts at which she was the sole performer of importance, than to accept such an engagement as could be offered to her at a theatre. She gave several concerts of this kind in England, whither she returned twice after she had ceased to appear at the Opera. She is said to have obtained more success in England than in any other country, and least of all in Italy.

When she appeared at the King's Theatre in 1824, and sang in Mayer's _Fanatico per la Musica_, the frequenters of the Opera, who remembered her performance in the same work eighteen years before, were surprised that so long an interval had produced so little change in the singer.

The success of the first night was prodigious; but Mr. Ebers (in his "Seven Years of the King's Theatre"), tells us that "repet.i.tions of this opera, again and again, diminished the audiences most perceptibly, though some new air was on each performance introduced, to display the power of the Catalani. * * * In this opera the sweet and soothing voice of Caradori was an agreeable relief to the bewildering force of the great wonder."

In one season of four months in London, Madame Catalani, by her system of concerts, gained upwards of ten thousand pounds, and doubled that sum during a subsequent tour in the provinces, in Ireland and Scotland. She sang for the last time in public at Dublin, in 1828.

[Sidenote: CATALANI'S AGREEMENT]

As to the sort of engagement she approved of, some notion may be formed from the following draft of a contract submitted by her to Mr. Ebers in 1826:----

"_Conditions between Mr. Ebers and M. P. de Valabreque._

"1. Every box and every admission shall be considered as belonging to the management. The free admissions shall be given with paper orders, and differently shaped from the paid tickets. Their number shall be limited. The manager, as well as Madame Catalani, shall each have a good box.

"2. Madame Catalani shall choose and direct the operas in which she is to sing; she shall likewise have the choice of the performers in them; she will have no orders to receive from any one; she will find all her own dresses.

"3. Madame Catalani shall have two benefits, to be divided with the manager; Madame Catalani's share shall be free: she will fix her own days.

"4. Madame Catalani and her husband shall have a right to superintend the receipts.

"5. Every six weeks Madame Catalani shall receive the payment of her share of the receipts, and of the subscription.

"6. Madame Catalani shall sing at no other place but the King's Theatre, during the season; in the concerts or oratorios, where she may sing, she will be ent.i.tled to no other share but that specified as under.

"7. During the season, Madame Catalani shall be at liberty to go to Bath, Oxford, or Cambridge.

"8. Madame Catalani shall not sing oftener than her health will allow her. She promises to contribute to the utmost of her power to the good of the theatre. On his side, Mr. Ebers engages to treat Madame Catalani with every possible care.

"9. This engagement, and these conditions, will be binding for this season, which will begin and end and continue during all the seasons that the theatre shall be under the management of Mr.

Ebers, unless Madame Catalani's health, or state of her voice, should not allow her to continue.

[Sidenote: CATALANI'S AGREEMENT]

"10. Madame Catalani, in return for the conditions above mentioned, shall receive the half part of the amount of all the receipts which shall be made in the course of the season, including the subscription to the boxes, the amount of those sold separately, the monies received at the doors of the theatre, and of the concert-room; in short, the said half part of the general receipts of the theatre for the season.

"11. It is well understood that Madame Catalani's share shall be free from every kind of deduction, it being granted her in lieu of salary. It is likewise well understood, that every expense of the theatre during the season shall be Mr. Ebers'; such as the rent of the theatre, the performers' salaries, the tradespeople's bills; in short, every possible expense; and Madame Catalani shall be entirely exonerated from any one charge.

"This engagement shall be translated into English, taking care that the conditions shall remain precisely as in the original, and shall be so worded as to stipulate that Madame Catalani, on receiving her share of the receipts of the theatre, shall in no ways whatever be considered as partner of the manager of the establishment.

"12. The present engagement being made with the full approbation of both parties, Mr. Ebers and M. Valabreque pledge their word of honour to fulfil it in every one of its parts."

I must now add that Madame Catalani, by all accounts, possessed an excellent disposition, that her private life was irreproachable, and that while gaining immense sums, she also gave immense sums away in charity. Indeed, the proceeds of her concerts, for the benefit of the poor and sick have been estimated at eighty thousand pounds, besides which she performed numerous acts of generosity towards individuals. Nor does she appear to have possessed that excessive and exclusive admiration for Madame Catalani's talent which was certainly entertained by her husband, M. Valabreque. Otherwise there can be no truth in the well known story of her giving, by way of homage, the shawl which had just been presented to her by the Empress of Russia, to a Moscow gipsey--one of those singing _tsigankie_ who execute with such originality and true expression their own characteristic melodies.

After having delighted the world for thirty-five years, Madame Catalani retired to a charming villa near Florence. The invasion of the cholera made her leave this retreat and go to Paris; where, in 1849, in her seventieth year, she fell a victim to the very scourge she had hoped to avoid.

[Sidenote: CELEBRATED SINGERS.]

As for the husband, Valabreque, he appears to have been mean, officious, conceited (of his wife's talent!) and generally stupid. M. Castil Blaze solemnly affirms, that when Madame Catalani was rehearsing at the Italian Opera of Paris an air which she was to sing in the evening to a pianoforte accompaniment, she found the instrument too high, and told Valabreque to see that it was lowered; upon which (declares M. Blase) Valabreque called for a carpenter and caused the unfortunate piano's feet to be amputated!

"Still too high?" cried Madame Catalani's husband, when he was accused in the evening of having neglected her orders. "Why, how much did you lower it, Charles?" addressing the carpenter.

"Two inches, Sir," was the reply.

The historian of the above anecdote calls Tamburini, Lablache, and Tadolini, as well as Rossini and Berryer, the celebrated advocate, to witness that the mutilated instrument had afterward four k.n.o.bs of wood glued to its legs by the same Charles who executed in so faithful a manner M. Valabreque's absurd behest. It continued to wear these pattens until its existence was terminated in the fire of 1838--in which by the way, the composer of _William Tell_, who at that time nominally directed the theatre, and who had apartments on the third floor, would inevitably have perished had he not left Paris for Italy the day before!

Before concluding this chapter, I will refer once more to the "Musical Reminiscences" of Lord Mount Edgc.u.mbe, whose opinions on singers seem to me more valuable than those he has expressed about contemporary composers, and who had frequent and constant opportunities of hearing the five great female vocalists engaged at the King's Theatre, between the years 1786 and 1814.

"They may be divided," he says, "into two cla.s.ses, of which Madame Mara and Mrs. Billington form the first; and they were in most respects so similar, that the same observations will apply equally to both. Both were excellent musicians, thoroughly skilled in their profession; both had voices of uncommon sweetness and agility, particularly suited to the bravura style, and executed to perfection and with good taste, every thing they sung. But neither was an Italian, and consequently both were deficient in recitative: neither had much feeling or theatrical talent, and they were absolutely null as actresses; therefore they were more calculated to give pleasure in the concert-room than on the stage.

The other three, on the contrary, had great and distinguished dramatic talents, and seemed born for the theatrical profession. They were all likewise but indifferently skilled in music, supplying by genius what they wanted in science, and thereby producing the greatest and most striking effects on the stage: these are their points of resemblance.

Their distinctive differences, I should say, were these: Gra.s.sini was all grace, Catalani all fire, Banti all feeling."

[Sidenote: GUGLIELMI.]

The composers, in whose music the above singers chiefly excelled, were Gluck, Piccinni, Guglielmi, Cimarosa, and Paisiello. We have seen that "Susanna" in the _Nozze di Figaro_, was one of Catalani's favourite parts; but as yet Mozart's music was very little known in England, and it was not until 1817 that his _Don Giovanni_ was produced at the King's Theatre.

After Gluck and Piccinni, the most admired composers, and the natural successors of the two great rivals in point of time, were Cimarosa and Paisiello. Guglielmi was considerably their senior, and on returning to Naples in 1777, after having spent fifteen years away from his country, in Vienna, and in London, he found that his two younger compet.i.tors had quite supplanted him in public favour. His works, composed between the years 1755 and 1762, had become antiquated, and were no longer performed. All this, instead of discouraging the experienced musician (Guglielmi was then fifty years of age) only inspired him with fresh energy. He found, however, a determined and unscrupulous adversary in Paisiello, who filled the theatre with his partisans the night on which Guglielmi was to produce his _Serva innamorata_, and occasioned such a disturbance, that for some time it was impossible to attend to the music.

The noise was especially great at the commencement of a certain quintett, on which, it was said, the success of the work depended.

Guglielmi was celebrated for the ingenuity and beauty of his concerted pieces, but there did not seem to be much chance, as affairs stood on this particular evening, of his quintett being heard at all.

Fortunately, while it was being executed, the door of the royal box opened, and the king appeared. Instantly the most profound silence reigned throughout the theatre, the piece was recommenced, and Guglielmi was saved. More than that, the enthusiasm of the audience was raised, and went on increasing to such a point, that at the end of the performance the composer was taken from his box, and carried home in triumph to his hotel.

From this moment Paisiello, with all his jealousy, was obliged to discontinue his intrigues against a musician, whom Naples had once more adopted. Cimarosa had taken no part in the plot against Guglielmi; but he was by no means delighted with Guglielmi's success. Prince San Severo, who admired the works of all three, invited them to a magnificent banquet where he made them embrace one another, and swear eternal friends.h.i.+p.[63] Let us hope that he was not the cause of either of them committing perjury.

[Sidenote: FINALES.]

Paisiello seems to have been an intriguer all his life, and to have been constantly in dread of rivals; though he probably had less reason to fear them than any other composer of the period. However, at the age of seventy-five, when he had given up writing altogether, we find him, a few months before his death, getting up a cabal against the youthful Rossini, who was indeed destined to eclipse him, and to efface even the memory of his _Barbiere di Siviglia_, by his own admirable opera on the same subject. It is as if, painting on the same canvas, he had simply painted out the work of his predecessor.