MADAME MALIBRAN GARCIA.
WE have seldom seen a performer who, both as a singer and an actress, has presented within the range of one part more faults and ex- cellences than Madame MALIBRAN GARCIA. Her voice is rich and full in the lower notes ; thin, unsteady, and often wiry in the upper. At one moment it is round and sweet, and the next ascending upwards it is jarring and grating on the sense. Her style is ambitious to a fault, and yet an indecision which should restrain her flights is the charac- teristic of the effect. She attempts much, always apparently with an uncertainty of the accomplishment, and a falter generally pervades the performance. Her graces are too much beyond the reach of her art, and we see her snatching at them with a painful doubt of the success, which is, nine times in ten, proved just by the miscarriage. All that is effbrt in her singing—and much there is of effort—is bad ; all that is easy is pleasing, and often fills the ear in lower passages of pathos with a profound beauty. From what we have said, it will be .collected that the fault of Madame MALIBRAN has ambition for its cause ; and the ambition of singers, like the ambition of conquerors, is in close affinity with destruction—the destruction of every thing good which comes within its range of operation. The sin is one really with- out a motive, and that must originate in self-gratification, for nobody likes flourishes and embellishments, and the applause that attends them is only bestowed because it is seen to be expected by the artist, or as ingenuity, however misbestowed, is deemed worthy a reward.
Madame MALIBRAN GARCIA'S merits and faults as an actress are analogous to those we attribute to her as a singer. Nature has done much for her. The smart forward girl whom we remember to have seen four years ago has grown into a lovely woman. Her face is de- licate. She has a beautiful soft eye, and a finely moulded forehead of intellectual expression. Her mouth and teeth are good. Her figure, sufficiently tall, well shaped, and graceful. Altogether, since the loss of Roerzi de BEGNIS no performer of so much personal attraction has appeared on the opera boards ; and in form she has the advantage of Roam, as she is on the other hand inferior to her in voluptuous love- liness of expression. Madame MALIBRAN has indeed all the materiel for an actress, and she has obviously an extreme desire to shine as one ; but her acting, like her singing, suffers from the impatient earnest- ness of her efforts for distinction. It is too salient, and—the word will surprise—coarse in the intention of effect. It is not by attitudes of knees bent, hands upheld, head thrown back, expanded nostrils,. and tremors of the limbs, that the passion of a fine artist is to be expressed; and these physical indications, as Madame MALIBRAN exhibited them, reminded us too strongly of the extatic movements of a Queen Sheba in a badly-managed puppet-show. In a Theiltre de Petit Lazary they really would do the thing better, and observing more of the modesty of .nature. An illustration may perhaps serve to make clear our views.
Some years ago, when Masaniellos were unknown at the Opera- house, a ballet was produced in which a grand effort was made to merit praise in the little details. In one scene some butterflies were to be hunted by Cupids, and these butterflies were about the size of the fashionable lady's hat of the present day. When the Brobdignag proportions of the insects were objected to the managers, their reply was that unless they were that size they would not be seen from the galleries. The extravagances of Madame MALIBRAN'S acting are as the ex- travagances of those butterflies. She exhibits emotions out of all nature that they may be seen from the galleries. She lays herself out for the coarsest apprehension, and catches the admiration of the vul- rarest taste. Persons enamoured of the start and the bounce, are in ecstasies with her. The fault springs from the avarice of admira- tion, the grasp at the acquisition of a sordid praise. Madame MALI- BRAN has, if we are not egregiously mistaken, capabilities for a very high degree of excellence in the highest department of her art, but she is giving a false direction to her talents. By vulgarizing, popu- larity or the applause of the million may certainly be obtained; but it is always to be borne in mind, that those who let themselves down to the trivial taste, open the widest market to an easy competition, and are liable to be dispossessed of favour by the thousand mediocre persons who have the poor art necessary to the gratification of the same coarse appetite. As a mere matter of policy, superior artists should endeavour to raise the popular taste to the standard of their excellencies, and not to lower themselves to its depravities. There are persons who will be violently amazed and angry at our imputing an adaptation to vulgar taste to a person so elegant as Madame MALI- BRAN GARCIA.; but the studied address to vulgarity, we must remind them, may consist with the observance of all the graces of the draw- ing-room. In the last scene of Otello, when Desdemona sadly touches her harp, as if in prelude to her doom, and wailing her own comingfate, it is Madame MALIBRAN'S conception to heighten the picture of me- lancholy, by blowing her nose, and frequently wiping her eyes with the corner of her sash, like a great whimpering school-girl. All the blockheads in the house of course cry "how natural I" and the same sort of nature might yet be improved by Desdemona's giving three or four good bawls as vocal accompaniments to the kerchief exercise of sorrow. This kind of trick is what we charge as an application to the vulgar taste - and we observe it carried further in actions of pas. sion which would be, as we before remarked, faulty in the gestures of a puppet. But such errors are encouraged by ready applause, while we see beauties of the most excellent character pass unobserved by the gross many. In the first scene, for example, where Desdemona hangs over her friend Emilia in melancholy confidings, the attitude and expression of Madame MALIBRAN was a study for REITSCH, the author of the outlines of GOETliE'S Faust. The gentle stoop of the head, as if droop- ing with care, the downcast timid eye, and just parted lips, as though opening to say what emotion refused to speech, formed as beautiful a representation of grace and sentiment as we ever beheld ; but it seemed to pass unheeded, while the Queen Sheba grandeurs were welcomed with boisterous applause. Altogether we think Madame MALIBRAN GARCIA a performer of very considerable talent ; and our only apprehension is lest she should spoil herself, or suffer herself to be spoiled, by giving it a bad direc- tion. The improvement in her within four years is prodigious : we re- membered a girl whose smartness bordered on flippancy, and who sang good music only with such effect that we did not recognize its goodness again ; and now we see an actress of graceful dignity, and hear a singer the lower half of whose voice gives examples of first- rate excellences—let her reject a vicious ambition, and the other half would not impair the effect of pleasure. Let her abandon embellish.. ment in singing, and extravagance in action, and Madame MALIBRAN GARCIA will be one of the brightest ornaments of the lyric stage. Her talents will obtain power by being confined within narrower hounds than they yet submit to. She possesses one grand element of success —devotion to her art : little more is wanting, but judicious regulation of her efforts.
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