Serior Manuel Garcia was entertained at a complimen- tary banquet
yesterday on his hundredth birthday. The bare statement is sufficiently impressive, but it admits of almost indefinite illustration in the case of so wonderful a living "link with the past" as the elder brother of the meteoric Malibran (who died in 1836) and of the illustrious Pauline Viardot-Garcia, the prototype of Consuelo, who is happily still living. Born in 1805, four years before Haydn's death, Seiior Manuel Garcia was the senior of Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, and Verdi. He went to America in 1825 with the first Italian opera company that ever visited the States, lost his voice, settled in Paris as a singing-master, migrated to London after the troubles of 1848, and has resided amongst us ever since, though he was invited by Wagner in 1876 to train the singers for the opening perform- ances at Bayreuth. As the teacher of Jenny Lind and Santley, and the inventor of the laryngoscope, Senor Garcia has a title to remembrance on his own merits, apart from the associations of his name and the longevity which has enabled him to witness the entire pageant of modern music from Beethoven to Strauss, and to see the music of the future become the music of yesterday.
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