BOOKS.
THE PRIMA DONNA.*
AMONGST the many propositions in Mr. Sutherland Edwards's genially written but disappointing volumes with which we join issue, is that contained in the very first sentence,—" This most fortunate among women was unknown to antiquity ; she belongs essentially to modern times." Why, what else but a prima donna was the celebrated performer whom Gorgo and Praxinoe (Syracusan women of the Buchholz type in the year 280 B.C.) went to hear sing the hymn to Adonis in the Palace of King Ptolemy Philadelphus ? " Be quiet, Praxinoe !" says Gorgo—we quote from Mr. Matthew Arnold's well-known version—" that first-rate singer, the Argive woman's daughter, is going to sing the Adonis hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have some- thing first-rate from her. She is going through her airs and graces ready to begin." And then, at the end of the hymn, Gorgo, unable to restrain her admiration, exclaims : "Praxinoe, certainly women are wonderful things. That lucky woman to know all that! and luckier still to have such a splendid voice ! "
—TravoANos ir; yAtricir Indeed, Theocritus was a keen and prescient observer, for in these last words he has expressed, through the mouth of Gorgo, a due sense of astonishment at the freak of Fortune which has enabled prime donne in all ages, by virtue of a. good memory, and the possession of a finely de- veloped larynx—(Banti, by-the-way, left hers as a legacy to her native town)—to exert so powerful an influence on the develop- ment of music. " We shall always find," writes Berlioz, " a fair number of female singers, popular from their brilliant singing of brilliant trifles, and odious to the great masters because utterly incapable of properly interpreting them. They have voices, a certain knowledge of music, and flexible throats : they are lacking in soul, brain, and heart. Such women are regular monsters, and all the more formidable to composers that they are often charming monsters. This explains the weakness of certain masters in writing falsely sentimental parts, which attract the public by their brilliancy. It also explains the number of degenerate works, the gradual degrada- tion of style, the destruction of all sense of expression, the neglect of dramatic proprieties, the contempt for the true, the grand, and the beautiful, and the cynicism and decrepitude of art in certain countries." Berlioz was doubtless a prey to that " black philosophy" of which he speaks elsewhere when he penned this terrible indictment against the prima donna. To write her history according to this view, would be to trace the development of the element of evil in music ; and to treat her with the sympathy and appreciation uniformly extended by her present historian would have seemed to Berlioz nothing short of an apotheosis of corruption.
Mr. Sutherland Edwards's opening chapters treat pleasantly of the fortunes of Anastasia Robinson, who married the Earl of Peterborough ; and Lavinia Fenton, who, in the cant phrase of to-day, " created " the part of Polly Peachum, and died a Duchess. The rivalry of Faustina and Cuzzoni forms the theme of another chapter, after which the author introduces his readers to a veritable " monster " in the person of Gabrielli.
gaterina Gabrielli," he writes, " the last of the great prime donne who figured at our Italian Opera House during the eighteenth century, was, sad to relate, the daughter of a cook." The facetiousness of this last remark is not very obvious. As to the statement that Gabrielli was the last great prima donna heard in England in the eighteenth century, we have only to say that it is, in the first place, impossible to reconcile with the prominence justly given by Mr. Edwards' himself to Mara, while it runs counter to the opinions expressed by so good a contemporary critic as Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, who, of all the singers heard during fifty years of opera-going, held Banti (nee Giorgi) to be the most delightful. Aguijari, again, though she never sang in opera in England, deserved a passing word of notice in virtue of her exceptionally high voice. In the chapter
• The Prima Donna: her History and Surroundings, from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century. By H. Sutherland Edwarils. 2 vole. London: Remington and Co.
on Sophie Arnould, otherwise full of interesting though not very relevant matter, we notice the remarkable statement that " Piceinni was, in his way, as great a composer as Gluck." Mr. Edwards has in some places made such good use of Lord Mount-Edgcumbe's Reminisnenees, that it is all the more sur- prising that he should have omitted to do so in others. The chapter on Mara leaves off abruptly in the year 1782, before she had ever sung in London. Her career in England, where she sang with equal success in opera and oratorio from the year 1784 on, is described at considerable length by the " Old Amateur." Her chequered life was marked by strange vicissi- tudes up to the very close. Declining in voice and popularity, she actually condescended to sing in The Beggars' Opera. Then, "in the maturity of charms which had never been great," she eloped from a drunken husband with a young flute-player, lived for several years in Russia, and suddenly reappeared in England, at the age of seventy, to give a benefit concert, at which the critics cruelly compared the tones of her voice to those of a penny trumpet. Such was the disastrous end of a singer who in her prime had exerted an influence over her audience compared by Lord Mount-Edgcumbe to that wielded by Siddons. Passing over Mrs. Billington and Grassini without a word of notice, Mr. Edwards tells us, under the heading " Catalani," a little about that wonderful singer, and a good deal about the claque in Paris. So, in the second volume, the chapter on Bosio should have been headed " Glinka," and that on Mademoiselle Schneider, " Offenbach." Mr. Edwards can hardly have seen M. Andre Martinet's work on Offenbach, or he would have been able to tell us more than these three facts,—first, that Mademoiselle Schneider was the prima donna of opera-bouffe ; second, that she took the chief part in La Grande Duchesse and La Belle Helene ; and thirdly, that she was to Offenbach what Colbran was to Rossini. This is literally and absolutely all that is said of this brilliant and capricious artist in the ten pages devoted to her. Titiens comes off better, the contents of what is nominally her chapter being about equally divided between her and Wagner. The greatest amount of space in the first volume is devoted to Sophie Arnould, Madame Colbran-Rossini being a good second. Of the contemporary stars, it is needless to say that Madame Patti claims chief consideration. But Mr. Edwards is always pleasant company even when most irrelevant. For example, we can pardon him a good deal in virtue of the anec- dotes of Barbaja, the famous impresario, quoted in his chapter on Madame Colbran-Rossini. The best of all is perhaps the following :—" Such, indeed, was his ignorance of everything belonging to the art to which he owed his fortune, that on a certain occasion, when one of his singers complained that the piano at which she had been singing was too high, he not only promised to have it lowered before the next rehearsal, but immediately after the vocalist's departure ordered the stage- carpenters to shorten the piano's legs by an inch or two."
The three successive chapters on Pasta, Sontag, and Malibran are to us fax the most interesting in the book. Mr. Edwards has drawn largely in the two latter cases upon such sources as Goethe's letters, Moscheles's memoirs, and the brochures of Rellstab and Saphir, and enlivened his pages with much entertaining matter. Dates are not a strong point with him. On p. 188, he says he heard Pasta in 1837 ; on p. 210, he says it was in 1839, or a year or two later. He tells us that Sontag was born in 1805 (p. 214), but on the next page gives the exact date as January 3rd% 1806. An inaccuracy of another sort appears on p. 254, where Mr. Edwards declares that Wagner always spoke disparagingly of Mendelssohn's music. As a matter of fact, Herr von Wolzogen has recorded the high terms in. which Wagner acknowledged Mendelssohn's talent, which he com- pared to that of a landscape-painter. The Fingal's Cave over- ture was especially a favourite of his. Mr. Edwards has given us a bright account of Malibran, but dismisses her equally gifted sister—Viardot-G-arcia—with a couple of lines. This is to us as much a matter of surprise as of regret, for Mr. Edwards approaches his subject more from the point of view of a man of letters or a historian of manners than a musical critic, in which capacity he is in far greater sympathy with Lord Mount-Edgcumbe than his own contemporaries. And yet, in spite of all his "chaff" against Wagner, he admits that no more romantic, more poetic work exists in music than Lohengrin, and speaks of the Walkyrie as singularly beautiful. The biographical notice of Jenny Lind is executed in good taste, a remark which also applies to the chapter on
Madame Patti, though we could have spared a few of the extracts from the " vivid narratives " of American journalists.
M. Strakosch, Patti's brother-in-law and agent, from the zeal which he displayed in sparing her all unnecessary efforts, not only attending to all her business affairs, but replacing her on occasions even at rehearsals, was made the butt of a good deal of amusing waggery in Vienna :—
" A piece was brought out at one of the minor theatres, called Adelina and her Brother-in-Law, in which Strakosch was represented as impersonating her on all possible and impossible occasions. A visitor called to see Adelina, and was told that she was not at home, but that Mr. Strakosch would receive him. A photographer wished to take Adeline's portrait ; she cannot sit,' replies Strakosch, but I shall be happy to replace her.' At last an infatuated admirer presented himself, bent on making to Adelina a declaration of love : She is too much engaged to listen to you,' replied the Strakosch of the farce; but anything you may have to say can be addressed to me."
As a genial though discursive narrator, Mr. Edwards is an excellent companion. Of his critical acumen, on the other band,
it is impossible to speak in as favourable terms. Speaking of Madame Nilsson's success at her first concert in London, he remarks :—" The concert audience found, as was afterwards discovered by oratorio audiences, that the opera public had, as usual, been right in its judgment. In fact, so varied are the demands made upon a singer in opera, that a thoroughly successful opera-singer is sure to succeed in every style." This opinion is refuted by Mr. Edwards several times in his own pages. It is true enough of Mara, of Titiens, and of Albani, but it will not hold good in the case of Malibran, Grisi, and Patti. Again, in his chapter on Albani he singles out for special commendation one of the weakest features in her singing,—her shake, which is neither " close," like Madame Patti's, nor true, like Madame Trebelli's. In the same chapter, again, he speaks of Rienzi as being the earliest of all Wagner's works. This is distinctly incorrect. And it is somewhat misleading to state, as he does on the same page, that "the English public has enjoyed the opportunity of hearing every- thing in the way of dramatic music that Wagner has written." Under the heading, "A Flight of Prime Donne," Mr. Edwards gives a brief account of the minora eiders of the opera-house, prefaced by some quasi-cynical remarks which are at variance with the good taste almost uniformly displayed throughout these volumes. " Many a prima donna to whom I should have been delighted to assign a place in this book, must be kept out or mentioned in only the most casual way, not from any fault of hers, but often from her very merits." The lives of well-regulated prime donne, no matter how great as artists, recommend themselves, he says later on, to the moralist, but not to the biographer. Here, again, the author's practice is inconsistent with his principles, for he has included notices of several singers of irreproachable character, while affecting to regard domestic infelicity as an inseparable concomitant of operatic success. Then he remarks of one well-known singer that she " has probably been married more than once ;" and in writing of another, speaks of " the usual separation" taking place in due time. Mr. Edwards gives notices of Mesdames Marie Roze, Hauck, and Valleria, but omits all mention of Mesdames Gerster, Sembrich, Lehmann, Nevada, or Van Zandt. In alluding to Bizet's early death, he speaks of thirty-seven " as that fatal limit which neither Mozart, Mendelssohn, nor Herold was destined to pass." As a matter of fact, Mendelssohn came within three months of completing his thirty-ninth year, and Herold within a few days of his forty-second. On the same page we read :— " Bizet had just undertaken the composition of Carmen when Madame Marie Roze at the Opera Comique obtained her first success in the Premier Jour de Bonheur, the last work con- tributed by Auber to the stage which he had enriched with so many masterpieces. Bizet, attracted by Madame (then Mademoiselle) Roze's great talents, both as a singer and as an actress, wrote the principal part in his opera specially for her." There is not a word of this story in M. Pigot's recently published Life of Bizet. Madame Marie Roze was undoubtedly the original Djalma in Auber's last opera, which was produced in 1869 ; but it was not her first suceess, and it is pretty clear from Bizet's letter to his friend Galabert, dated June 17th, 1872, that at the date when he received the commission from the Opera Comique, three years after the production of Le Premier Jour de Bonhcur, he may have had plans and projects, but he had not yet " undertaken the composition " of the opera destined to make him immortal. Besides these in- accuracies of statement, Mr. Edwards has left uncorrected a great number of inaccuracies of form. The book abounds in misprints. The luckless Tannhiluser is badly used. Prince Belgioso (I., 270) is, we suppose, meant for Prince Belgiojoso. And the author, always conversational in his style, becomes slipshod when he talks of people " turning up " instead of " arriving," or of a vocalist indulging in " a grave flirtation with a bassoon."
An exceedingly interesting and valuable work might have been written on this subject by one resolved to trace in no unduly hostile spirit the influence of great singers on the development of musical composition. And, on the other hand, a writer ready to indulge the modern appetite for personalities might have compiled from the materials available a portentous chronicle of the vagaries, the vanities, and the vices of great artists. We may regret that Mr. Sutherland Edwards has not adopted the former course, but we should be very thankful that he has resolutely refused to follow the example set by so many biographers of the back-door. He has executed his task perfunctorily in some passages, and with supererogatory zeal in others. As a work of reference, these volumes are, unfortunately, of the slenderest value. But they are full of suggestive and entertaining matter, and can be cordially recommended to all readers, musical or non-musical—the latter, perhaps, for choice—who are in search of a few hours' legitimate amusement.
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