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
"The orchestra commenced with Rossini's Overture to "William
Tell"--perhaps the finest piece of instrumental picture music
since Haydn's Creation and the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven.
Its fresh and vivid coloring, its atmospheric changes, its smart
Alpine vigor and heroic ensemble, were made as present and as
real as any sixty instruments could make them. Exquisitely did
those three violoncellos sketch the first scene of soft, cool
sunset on the unruffled lake; the mellow Corno Anglaise, male
partner to the oboe, sweetly woke the flute-like mountain echoes;
the low moan and whistle of the storm rose life like in the
crescendo of the violins, and as it died away the startling
quick-step of liberty leaped strong and simultaneous from such a
tutti as we have hardly heard from any orchestra. We can believe
that Mr. Benedict was quite sincere in telling them he had not
conducted a better orchestra in Europe. The other Overture to
Masaniello was also splendidly played, but the composition is, to
our taste, too hackneyed to fill out the programme of a Jenny
Lind before the largest audience in the world. The accompaniments
to the singing were usually given with sympathetic precision, and
subdued shading or vigorous seconding, as the case required. We
cannot speak too well of M. Benedict's control of his forces.
"The second piece was the Viravviso ("As I View Now") from La
Somnambula, delivered in the richest and most vibrating barytone
that WE Americans have heard, by Sig. Belletti. Now that we have
heard him from a nearer position, we have not a doubt left of his
superiority in voice, style, execution to all our Italian
favorites of the same register hitherto. He absolutely glorified
the cavatina which rapidly grew commonplace with Brough, and had
but half recovered even in the hands of the worthy Italian
artists who have since sung it on the stage for us. His crowning
achievement last night, however, was the actual singing of a
Tarentella by Rossini--a kind of movement which we have hitherto
heard only from instruments--a whirling, spinning, delirious,
top-like movement in which the singer seems galvanized and
tyrannized by one too happy and all-mastering idea in spite of
himself. The audience too, in spite of themselves, were sucked
into its whirling ecstacy, and it was imperatively encored. In
Mozart's Non piu Andrai the chaster prototype of Rossini's Largo
al factotum, his vocalization was elastic, spirited and elegant,
but the effect of such a piece was necessarily lost upon the
outer circles of so vast an auditory.
"For other variety there was a brilliant show duett on themes
from La Somnambula for piano and violin by Messrs. Benedict and
Noll, and a solo on the pianoforte by that most promising young
artist, Hoffman. For this he chose De Meyer's fantasy on
Semiramide, decidedly of the modern monster school of pianoforte
composition, though quite a vigorous, graceful and redeeming
specimen thereof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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