Great Singers, Second Series eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 209 pages of information about Great Singers, Second Series.

Great Singers, Second Series eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 209 pages of information about Great Singers, Second Series.
months in the principal cities and theatres of that country, and succeeded in evoking from the critical Italians as warm a welcome as she had commanded elsewhere.  In one city the people were so enthusiastic that they unharnessed her horses, and drew her carriage home from the theatre after her closing performance.  Although she never entirely mastered the Italian school, she yet displayed so much intelligence, knowledge, and faculty in her art-work, that all catholic lovers of music recognized her great talents.  She appeared again in Vienna in 1836, with Mme. Tadolini, Genaro, and Galli, singing in “L’Elisir d’Amore,” and works of a similar cast, operas unsuited, one would think, to the peculiar cachet of her genius, but her ability in comic and romantic operas, though never so striking as in grand tragedy, seemed to develop with practice.

Her last English engagement was in 1837, opening the season with a performance of “Fidelio” in English.  The whole performance was lamentably inferior to that at the Opera-House in 1832.  “Norma” was produced, Schroeder-Devrient being seconded by Wilson, Giubilei, and Miss Betts.  She was either very ill advised or overconfident, for her “massy” style of singing was totally at variance with the light beauty of Bellini’s music.  Her conception of the character, however, was in the grandest style of histrionic art.  “The sibyls of Michael Angelo are not more grand,” exclaimed one critic; “but the vocalization of Pasta and Grisi is wholly foreign to her.”  During this engagement, Mme. Schroeder-Devrient was often unable to perform, from serious illness.  From England she went to the Lower Rhine.

In 1839 she was at Dresden with Herr Tichatschek, one of the first tenors of Germany, a handsome man, with a powerful, sweet, and extensive voice.  In June, 1841, she gave a performance at Berlin, to assist the Parisian subscription for a monument to Cherubini.  The opera was “Les Deux Journees,” in which she took her favorite part of Constance.  The same year she sang at Dresden with the utmost success, in a new role in Goethe’s “Tasso,” in which she was said to surpass her Fidelio.  For several years Mme. Schroeder-Devrient resided in perfect seclusion in the little town of Rochlitz, and appeared to have forgotten all her stage ambition.  Suddenly, however, she made her reappearance at Dresden in the role of Romeo in Bellini’s “I Montecchi ed i Capuletti.”  She had lost a good deal of her vocal power and skill, yet her audiences seemed to be moved by the same magic glamour as of old, in consequence of her magnificent acting.  Among other works in which she performed during this closing operatic season of her life was Gluck’s “Iphigenie en Aulis,” which was especially revived for her.  Johanna Wagner, the sister of the great composer, was also in the cast, and a great enthusiasm was created by a general stage presentation of almost unparalleled completeness for that time.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Great Singers, Second Series from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.