A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. BarnumBenton, Joel
History
A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum
Benton, Joel
Barnum's American Museum; Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor), 1810-1891; Circus owners -- United States -- Biography
"In Jenny Lind we still feel that it is not easy to separate the
singer from the person. She sings herself. She does not, like
many skilful vocalists, merely recite her musical studies, and
dazzle you with splendid feats unnaturally acquired; her singing,
through all her versatile range of parts and styles, is her own
proper and spontaneous activity--integral, and whole. Her
magnificent voice, always true and firm, and as far beyond any
instrument as humanity is beyond nature, seems like the audible
beauty of her nature and her character. That she is an artist in
the highest sense is a question long since settled, and any
little incidental variation from the bold and perfect outline of
success in any special effort, as the faltering of her voice from
natural embarrassment in the commencing of Casta Diva that first
night, could not to a true listener at all impede the recognition
of the wonderful art which could afford a little to humanity on
so trying an occasion. For she was as it were beginning her
career anew; literally to her was this a new world; and she felt
for a moment as if in her first blushing maidenhood of song. This
second time the hesitation of the voice in that commencement was
not felt. The note began soft and timid and scarce audible, as
the prayer of Norma might have done; but how it gradually swelled
with the influx of divine strength into the soul! The grand
difficulty in the opening andante movement of Casta Diva lies in
its broad, sustained phrasing, in the long, generous undulation
of its rhythm, which with most singers drags or gets broken out
of symmetry. Jenny Lind conceived and did it truly. The
impassioned energy of the loud-pleading syncopated cries in which
the passage attains its climax; the celestial purity and
penetrating sweetness of that highest note afterward; the
exquisite cadenza to the andante; and the inspiring eloquence of
the allegro: Ah! bello a me ritorna, were far beyond anything WE
have had the fortune hitherto to hear.
"They that sat, or even stood, in Castle Garden, may mark down a
white day in their calendar. In point of audience, programme,
execution and inspiration, it was the greatest concert, so far.
If anything more had been needed to confirm the impression which
Jenny Lind had previously made on an American public, and to
place her continued success beyond the possibility of doubt, last
night's experience certainly supplied it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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