music of Mozart, however, who had just become a great
favorite in England. The strict time, the severe
form, and the importance of the accompaniments were
not suited to her splendid and luxuriant style, which
disdained all trammels and rules. Yet she was
the first singer who introduced “Le Nozze di
Figaro” to the English stage. Besides
Susanna
in “Le Nozze,” she appeared as
Vitellia
in “La Clemenza di Tito,” a serious
role;
and both in acting and singing these interpretations
were praised by the most intelligent connoisseurs—who
had previously attacked the vicious redundancy of
her style severely—as nearly matchless.
Arch and piquant as the waiting-woman, lofty, impassioned,
and haughty as the patrician dame of old Rome, she
rendered each as if her sole talent were in the one
direction. Tremmazani, a delightful tenor, who
had just arrived in England, and possessed a voice
of that rich, touching Cremona tone so rare even in
Italy, it may be remarked in passing, refused the
part of Count Almaviva as lacking sufficient importance,
and because he regarded it as beneath his dignity to
appear in comic opera.
The year 1813 was the last season of Catalani’s
regular engagement on the operatic stage. She
continued to sing in “Tito” and “Figaro,”
but her principal pleasure was in the most extravagant
and bizarre show-pieces, such, for example, as variations
composed for the violin on popular airs like “God
save the King,” “Rule Britannia,”
“Cease your Funning.” She carried
her departure from the true limits of art to such
an outrageous degree as to draw on her head the severest
reprobation of all good judges, though the public
listened to her wonderful execution with unbounded
delight and astonishment. Toward the latter part
of the season an extraordinary riot took place in
consequence of Catalani’s failure to appear
two successive evenings. The managers were in
arrears, and the diva by the advice of her
husband adopted this plan to force payment. There
were mutterings of the thunder on the first non-appearance;
but when on the following night Catalani was still
absent, the storm broke. The opera which had been
substituted was half finished when the clamor drowned
all the artistic noise behind the footlights.
A military guard who had been called in to protect
the stage from invasion were overpowered by a throng
of gentlemen who leaped on from the auditorium, many
of them men of high rank, and the guns and bayonets
wrested from the soldiers’ hands. Bloodshed
seemed imminent; and had it not been for the moderation
of the soldiers, who permitted themselves to be disarmed
rather than fire, the result would have been very
serious. The chandeliers and mirrors were all
broken into a thousand pieces, and the musical instruments
hurled around in the wildest confusion. Fiddles,
flutes, horns, drums, swords, bayonets, muskets, operatic
costumes, and stage properties generally were hurled
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