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
"And now for the 'Queen of Song'--or, if so qualifying it will
better suit the Italians, the NORTHERN Queen of Song.
"She commenced with one of the most tender and graceful, and
hereabouts least hackneyed airs of Bellini--the Qui la Voce from
I Puritani. Her liquid purity of voice and graceful gliding
through its flowery labyrinthine passages was to us not more
remarkable than the true but quiet fervor which animated it.
Jenny Lind shows no feeling! and excites none! draws no tears!
True Art supplies the place of tears by touching the emotions
which are deeper and serener, and not a whit less human. But of
this more fully when we have room.
"The splendid song from Mozart's 'Magic Flute,' Non Paventar,
brought into play the salient diamonds of her highest voice,
which arches like the tall shaft of a fountain sparkling in the
sun. The introduction, a bold, exhorting strain, in grandiose
style, full of large intervals, was given with a glorious fervor,
and no lark ever carolled more blithely or more at ease than her
voice as it soared to F in alt! Benedict's English ballad, 'Take
this Lute,' she sang with a simplicity and pathos that won the
audience completely; and no part seemed more genuine or more
expressive than the difficult cadenza at its close.
"The romanza from Robert le Diable was perhaps the most
fascinating of her more studied performances. This, like all her
brilliant things, if not impassioned in the cheaper superficial
sense, was at all events vital, and from the soul. She is never
mechanical, whatever you may say about want of passion. Is any
tragic pathos, such as is ready on the smallest occasion, or on
none, more admirable and more inspiring, more from the inmost
soul, than is that gushing up of a full, glad, true heart which
is her native mood of song, and which was so glorious last night
in the Ah! non Giunge from Somnambula? The rapturous encore to
this was answered by the Swedish 'Herdsman's Song.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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