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Sophie Cruvelli was only eight years on the operatic stage, but during that period she impressed herself on the world as one of the great singers not only of her own age, but of any age; yet far greater in her possibilities than in her attainment. She had by no means reached the zenith of her professional ability when she suddenly retired into private life.
Giulia Grisi, Clara Novello, Pauline Viardot, Fanny Per-siani, Jenny Lind, Maretta Alboni, Nantier Didier, Sophie Cruvelli, Catherine Hayes, Louisa Pyne, Duprez, Mario, Ronconi, and others all these had arisen since the day she had left the art world as Countess Rossi. Only the joyous and warmhearted Lablache was left of her old comrades to welcome her back to the scene of her old triumphs.
Beyond the port stretches the Boulevard de l'Impératrice, inaugurated a few years since by the late empress of Russia, with its fine villas, notably the splendid Venetian Palace, an exact reproduction of the celebrated Moncenigo Palace at Venice, belonging to Viscount Vigier, whose wife was once a popular idol of the musical world of Paris and London Sophie Cruvelli and the extraordinary Moresque-looking castle of Mr.
"The audience was electrified by the tones of her magnificent voice, which realized with equal effect those high inspirations that demand passion, force, and impulse, and those tender passages that require delicacy, taste, and a thorough knowledge of the art of singing. No one could reproach Mlle. Cruvelli with exaggeration, so well did she know how to restrain her ardent nature."
Her Rosina in Rossini's great comic opera was a piquant and attractive performance. The prevalence of the Lind fever, which seemed to know no abatement, however, made a London engagement at this period not highly flattering to other singers, and Mlle. Cruvelli beat a retreat to Germany, where she made a musical tour.
Each transition of feeling was faithfully conveyed, and the suspicion, growing by degrees into certainty, that the wretched prisoner is Florestan, was depicted with heart-searching truth. The internal struggle was perfectly expressed." "With Mlle. Cruvelli," says this writer, "Fidelio is governed throughout by one purpose, to which everything is rendered subservient.
Perhaps, in these examples of artistic austerity, one may find the cause as much in vocal limitations as in deliberate self-restraint. Sophie Cruvelli was the daughter of a Protestant clergyman named Cruwell, and was born at Bielefeld, in Prussia, in the year 1830.
Cru veil i, secured her for his company, which when completed consisted of Mmes. Persiani and Viardot, Miles. Alboni and Cruvelli, Signori Cuzzani, Belletti, Gardoni, and Polonini. Mlle. Cruvelli was now eighteen, and in spite of the Lind mania, which was raging at white heat, the young German cantatrice made a strong impression on the London public.
One of these whims seized the young lady in the very height of a brilliantly successful engagement, and one day she took French leave without a word of warning. The next that was heard of Sophie Cruvelli was that she was singing at Wiesbaden, and then that she had appeared as Fides in "Le Prophète" at Aix-La-Chapelle.
Cruvelli revived the Parisian excitement of the previous season by her appearance at the Grand Opéra, as Alice in "Robert le Diable." The audience was a most brilliant one, and their reception of the artist was one of the most prolonged and enthusiastic applause. She continued to sing in Paris during the summer months and early autumn, and was the reigning goddess of the stage.
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