he brought into the greenroom one night, when she
came off the stage fatigued and panting with her efforts,
a pot of foaming porter, which she drank with a sigh
of deepest pleasure. Touched by the young Irishman’s
thoughtfulness, she pledged herself to help him whenever
the opportunity came, and soon after sang at his benefit.
Mara had resolved not to sing again on the lyric stage,
and her condescension was a godsend to Kelly, who was
then very much out at elbows. Speaking of her
proffer, he says: “I was thunderstruck at
her kindness and liberality, and thankfully accepted.
She fixed on
Mandane in ‘Artaxerxes,’
and brought the greatest receipts ever known at that
house, as the whole pit, with the exception of two
benches, was railed into boxes. So much,”
he adds sententiously, “for a little German
proficiency, a little common civility, and a pot of
porter.”
Mme. Mara made such a brilliant hit in opera
that the public clamor for her continuance on the
stage overcame her old resolutions. The opera-house
was reopened, and Sir John Gallini, with this popular
favorite at the head of his enterprise, had a most
prosperous season. Both as a lyric cantatrice
and as the matchless singer of oratorio, she was the
delight of the public for two years. In 1788 she
went to Turin to sing at the Carnival, where it was
the custom to open the gala season with a fresh artist,
who supplied the place of the departing vocalist,
whether a soprano or tenor. Her predecessor, a
tenor, was piqued at his dismissal, and tried to prejudice
the public against her by representing her as alike-ugly
in person and faulty in art. Mara’s shrewdness
of resource turned the tables on the Italian.
On her first appearance her manner was purposely full
of gaucherie, her costume badly considered
and all awry, her singing careless and out of time.
The maligner was triumphant, and said to all, “Didn’t
I say so? See how ugly she is; and as for singing—did
you ever hear such a vile jargon of sounds?”
On the second night Mara appeared most charmingly
dressed, and she sang like an angel—a surprise
to the audience which drove the excitable Italians
into the most passionate uproar of applause and delight.
Mara was crowned on the stage, and was received by
the King and Queen with the heartiest kindness and
a profusion of costly gifts. A similar reception
at Venice tempted her to prolong her Italian tour,
but she preferred to return to London, where she sang
under Wyatt at the Pantheon, which was transformed
into a temporary opera-house. She now sang with
Pacchierotti, the successor of Farinelli and Caffarelli,
and the last inheritor of their grand large style.
“His duettos with Mara were the most perfect
pieces of execution I ever heard,” said Lord
Mount Edgcumbe. One of the most pathetic experiences
of Mara’s life was her passage through Paris
in 1792 on her way to Germany, when she saw her former
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