“Anon, with the utmost precision, truth and incredible warmth, he repeated the finest passages of that portion; the beautiful obligato recitative, where the prophet depicts the desolation of Jerusalem, till he drew a flood of tears; there was not a dry eye. There was nothing more to be desired in tenderness of singing, or force of expression and of grief. He dwelt especially on the places where the artist most evinced himself the great maestro. He abandoned the vocal part, flew to the instrument, and then returned in an instant to singing, so hurrying this transition, that the connection and unity of the whole were maintained. Was I astonished at him? Yes, I was astonished. Was I moved to sympathy? I was, indeed, so moved, but with a dash of the comic mingling with the emotion and modifying its nature. “But you would have broken into laughter at the way in which he imitated the different instruments. With swoln, out-puffed cheeks, and a rough, obtuse tone, he represented horns and bassoons; with a crying, nasal tone the oboes; with incredible quickness he hurried his voice to mimic stringed-instruments, trying most exactly to give their respective sounds; piping for the piccolos, cooing for the flutes, screaming, chanting with the looks of a maniac, and representing solo the danseurs and danseuses, the men-singers and women-singers, a whole orchestra, a whole opera-house, splitting himself into twenty different roles, hastening, retarding, with the mien of one ’rapt, with eyes winking and mouth in a foam.