For Every Music Lover: A Series of Practical Essays on MusicMoore, Aubertine Woodward
History
For Every Music Lover: A Series of Practical Essays on Music
Moore, Aubertine Woodward
Music -- History and criticism
A Swedish songstress with a powerful, well-trained voice, who before
Jenny Lind won operatic laurels in foreign lands, was Henrietta
Nissen-Saloman, also a pupil of Garcia. Later, the brilliant Swedish
soprano, Christine Nilsson, with a voice of wonderful sweetness and
beauty, reaching with ease F in alt., with the most thorough skill in
vocalization, with dramatic intuitions, expressive powers and magnetic
presence, charmed the public on two continents in such roles as
Marguerite, Mignon, Elsa, Ophelia and Lucia. She, too, bore through the
world with her the northern songs she had learned to cherish in
childhood.
Still another delightful dramatic soprano from the land of Jenny Lind is
Sigrid Arnoldson, who has a beautiful voice, winning personality, and
pronounced musical intelligence. She is still in her prime.
When the name of Adelina Patti is mentioned, we always think of long
enduring vocal powers, many farewells and high prices. Catalani, in her
full splendor, earned about $100,000 a season. Malibran's profits for
eighty-five concerts at La Scala ran to $95,000. Jenny Lind received
$208,675 for ninety-five concerts under Barnum's management. Patti has
had as much as $8,395 for one performance, and long received a fee of
$5,000 a night. In coloratura roles she has been pronounced the greatest
singer of her time, both in opera and concert. Her voice, noted for its
wide compass, exceeding sweetness, marvelous flexibility and perfect
equality, has been so wonderfully well cared for that even now, in her
sixtieth year, she enjoys singing, although she rarely appears in
public. Her sister, Carlotta, was also a coloratura vocalist of
exquisite technique.
Queens of song now pass in swift review before the mind's eye. We recall
Marietta Alboni, the greatest contralto of the middle of the last
century, with a voice rich, mellow, liquid, pure and endowed with
passionate tenderness, the only pupil of Rossini; Theresa Tietiens, with
her mighty dramatic soprano, whose tones were softer than velvet, and
her noble acting; Marie Piccolomini, a winning mezzo-soprano; Parepa
Rosa, with her sweet, strong voice and imposing stage presence; Pescha
Leutner, the star of 1856; Louisa Pyne, the English Sontag; Parodi,
pupil of Pasta; Etelka Gerster, whose beautiful soprano could fascinate
if it could not awe; Pauline Lucca, whose originality, artistic
temperament and intelligence placed her in the front rank of dramatic
sopranos, and many others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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