Great Singers, Second Series: Malibran To TitiensFerris, George T. (George Titus)
History
Great Singers, Second Series: Malibran To Titiens
Ferris, George T. (George Titus)
Singers -- Biography
At the first performance of the festival in the morning, she was carried
out of her dressing-room in a swoon, but the dying singer was bent on
doing what she considered her duty. She returned and delivered the air
of _Abraham_ by Cimarosa. Her thrilling tones and profound dejection
made a deep impression on the audience. The next day she rallied from
her sick-bed and insisted on being carried to the festival building,
where she was to sing a duet with Mme. Caradori-Allen. This was the
dying song of the swan, and it is recorded that her last effort was one
of the finest of her life. The assembly, entranced by the genius and
skill of the singer, forgot her precarious condition and demanded a
repetition. Malibran again sang with all the passionate fire of her
nature, and her wonderful voice died away in a prolonged shake on her
very topmost note. It was her last note on earth, for she was carried
thence to her deathbed.
Her sufferings were terrible. Convulsions and fainting-fits followed
each other in swift succession, and it was evident that her end was
near. The news of her fatal illness excited the deepest sympathy and
sorrow throughout England and France, and bulletins of her condition
were issued every day. Pending the arrival of her own physician, Dr.
Belluomini, from London, she had been bled while in a fainting-fit by
two local practitioners. When she recovered her senses, she said, "I am
a slain woman, for they have bled me!" She died on September 23, 1836,
and De Beriot's name was the last word that parted her pallid lips.
The death of this great and idolized singer produced a painful shock
throughout Europe, and was regarded as a public calamity, for she had
been as much admired and beloved as a woman as she was worshiped as
an artist. Her remains, first interred in Manchester, were afterward
removed by her husband to Brussels, where he raised a circular memorial
chapel to her memory at Lacken. Her statue, chiseled in white marble by
Geefs, represents her as _Norma_, and stands in the center, faintly lit
by a single sunbeam admitted from a dome, and surrounded by masses of
shadow. "It appears," says the Countess de Merlin, "like a fantastic
thought, the dream of a poet."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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