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It may be that the higher value of a soprano voice in the music market stirred a feeling in Alboni which had been singularly lacking to her earlier career. Whatever the reason might have been, it is a notorious fact that Mlle. Alboni deliberately forced the register upward, and in doing so injured the texture of her voice, and lost something both of luscious tone and power.
. . . On Saturday I went with Sir William and Lady Molesworth to their box in the new Covent Garden opera, which has been opened for the first time this week. There I saw Grisi and Alboni and Tamburini in the "Semiramide." It was a new world of delight to me. Grisi, so statuesque and so graceful, delights the eye, the ear, and the soul.
Mademoiselle Klosking, successor and rival of Alboni, went to the Kursaal, pour passer le temps; and she passed it so well that in half an hour the bank was broken, and there was a pile of notes and gold before La Klosking amounting to ten thousand pounds and more. The lady waved these over to her agent, Mr.
That's a sorry looking bit of paper, your honor, but it's what'll buy more than one twist of pig-tail." Mr. Alboni perused the document. He was astounded! not so much at the contents of that soiled bit of parchment, which was the instrument by which Natalie, or the holder, could come into possession of a handsome fortune; but it was at the honesty of this whole-souled sailor.
It was about fifteen years ago that Thalberg, who has just died only fifty-nine years old, was in this country. Jenny Lind had been here some years earlier, and Alboni and Grisi a little later, and Vieuxtemps and Sivori and Ole Bull a dozen years before.
Alboni, the wonderful contralto who owed her early advancement and training to the kindly interest of Rossini, Fanny Persiani, the daughter of the hunchback tenor, Tacchinardi, who through her singing did more than any other artist to make the music of Donizetti popular throughout Europe these and a number of other names might be mentioned to show that Italy was now the fountain head of song, as in the Renaissance it had been the home of the other fine arts.
M. Duponchel, the manager of the Opéra in Paris, hastened to London to hear Alboni sing, and immediately offered her an engagement. In October, 1847, she made her Parisian début. Her first appearance in concert was with Alizard and Barroilhet. "Many persons, artists and amateurs," said Fiorentino, "absolutely asked on the morning of her début, Who is this Alboni? Whence does she come? What can she do?" And their interrogatories were answered by some fragments of those trifling and illusory biographies which always accompany young vocalists. There was, however, intense curiosity to hear and see this redoubtable singer who had held the citadel of the Royal Italian Opera against the attraction of Jenny Lind, and the theatre was crowded to suffocation by rank, fashion, beauty, and notabilities on the night of her first concert, October 9th. When she stepped quietly on the stage, dressed in black velvet, a brooch of brilliants on her bosom, and her hair cut
"And your daughter's name was Natalie," remarked Mr. Delwood; "it is a singular coincidence that the child should be named for the mother." "It is all a miracle," said Harry, "and sometimes I have thought old Vingo not far out of the way, when he declared 'Missy Sea-flower to have been left upon the beach by no other than the Lord." Gradually Mr. Alboni came to be like himself again.
"Your sainted mother is in heaven," spake Mr. Alboni.
Alboni received this compliment as it was intended, and as one motive in visiting his native land again was to dispose of this estate, he now directed his attention to the future comfort of this most worthy couple; for the domestics who had served in the family of Alboni, must not suffer from want.
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