Famous Singers of To-day and YesterdayLahee, Henry Charles
History
Famous Singers of To-day and Yesterday
Lahee, Henry Charles
Singers
In 1892 Joseph Bennett, the eminent critic, wrote: "The foremost
baritone of the day is still with us, and though his physical means have
suffered changes which no skill can avoid, he is a greater artist than
ever, and retains plenty of vitality for his work."
Mr. Santley married, in 1859, Miss Gertrude Kemble, the granddaughter of
the celebrated actor, and his daughter, Miss Edith Santley, had a short
but exceedingly brilliant career as a concert singer, previous to her
marriage, in 1884, to the Hon. R. H. Lyttelton.
Jean Baptiste Faure, a French singer, will be remembered as the creator
of the part of Mephistopheles in Gounod's "Faust." He was a good
musician and a fine actor, and he owed more to his genius as a comedian
than to his voice, which was of great compass, though not of a
brilliant quality. In the winter of 1861 he made his first appearance at
the Grand Opera in Paris, though he had made his operatic debut nine
years before at the Opera Comique. For many years he remained at the
Grand Opera, during which time he was a prominent figure in operatic
history. Faure was born in 1830, and was the son of a singer at the
church of Moulins. His father died when he was but seven years old. At
the age of thirteen he entered the solfeggio class at the Conservatoire
in Paris, to which city his family had moved when he was three years
old. At the breaking of his boy's voice he took up piano and double
bass, and was for some time a member of the band at the Odeon theatre.
After his voice was settled he joined the chorus at the Theatre Italien,
and in 1850 again entered the Conservatoire, where he gained, in 1852,
the first prizes for singing and for opera comique. He is a man of
refined tastes and great culture, and an enthusiastic collector of
pictures. In 1859 he married Mlle. Lefebre, an actress at the Opera
Comique. Of Faure's Mephistopheles, in "Faust," a critic of 1876 writes,
"No impersonation of this character at all approaching the general
excellence of his could be named." What Faure respected most was the
intention of the composer. It is impossible for any one to penetrate
more deeply into a part, to adorn it with more delicate gradations of
light and shade, to hit upon more felicitous contrasts and juster
intonations, to identify himself more thoroughly with a character or an
epoch. He proceeded by degrees, led his audience to sublimest heights of
enthusiasm by cleverly calculated stages,--he fascinated them.
Of French baritones, Victor Maurel is the one who has succeeded Faure.
His creation of the part of Iago, in Verdi's "Otello," was considered a
masterpiece of lyric acting, and Iago is at the present day his greatest
role.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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