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
"Signor Belletti was the next mark of expectation. In one of
Rossini's most ornate and florid bravura songs (from Maometto
Secondo) he produced a barytone of such warm, rich, solid,
resonant and feeling quality as we perhaps have never heard in
this country (though without closer observation from the less
remote position in which a barytone naturally requires to be
heard, we hardly dare to place it above Badiali's); while in
refinement of conception and of execution he left little to be
desired.
"Now came a moment of breathless expectation. A moment more, and
Jenny Lind, clad in a white dress, which well became the frank
sincerity of her face, came forward through the orchestra. It is
impossible to describe the spontaneous burst of welcome which
greeted her. The vast assembly rose as one man, and for some
minutes nothing could be seen but the waving of hands and
handkerchiefs, nothing heard but a storm of tumultuous cheers.
The enthusiasm of the moment, for a time beyond all bounds, was
at last subdued after prolonging itself by its own fruitless
efforts to subdue itself, and the divine songstress, with that
perfect bearing, that air of all dignity and sweetness, blending
a child-like simplicity and half-trembling womanly modesty with
the beautiful confidence of genius and serene wisdom of art,
addressed herself to song, as the orchestral symphony prepared
the way for the voice in Casta Diva. A better test-piece could
not have been selected for her debut. Every soprano lady has sung
it to us; but nearly every one has seemed only trying to make
something of it, while Jenny Lind WAS the very music of it for
the time being. We would say no less than that; for the wisest
and honestest part of criticism on such a first hearing of a
thing so perfect, was to give itself purely up to it, without
question, and attempt no analysis of what too truly fills one to
have yet begun to be an object of thought.
"If it were possible, we would describe the quality of that
voice, so pure, so sweet, so fine, so whole and all-pervading, in
its lowest breathings and minutest fioriture as well as in its
strongest volume. We never heard tones which in their sweetness
went so far. They brought the most distant and ill-seated auditor
close to her. They WERE tones, every one of them, and the whole
air had to take the law of their vibrations. The voice and the
delivery had in them all the good qualities of all the good
singers. Song in her has that integral beauty which at once
proclaims it as a type for all, and is most naturally worshipped
as such by the multitude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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