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If all those who are endowed with equal sensitiveness of ear and of palate prefer music to feasting, and would any day give up a dinner at Francatelli's for the sake of hearing a rejuvenescent Persiani as Zerlina, or Patti as Dinorah, the one thing presumable is, that all such persons derive more enjoyment from perfect melody than from perfect cookery, and little else remains to be said on the subject.
Watch Melba singing the Mad Scene from Lucia, Tetrazzini, the Shadow Song from Dinorah, or Sembrich, the music of the Queen of the Night in the Magic Flute, and you will observe that they replenish the original intake of breath with half-breaths, a practice which enables them at every opportunity to make the required pause before breath-emission.
Patti always kept a ready repertory for the scene, with a song in the vernacular of the people for whom she was singing to bring the enthusiasm to a climax and a finish: "Home, Sweet Home" in New York and London, "Solovei" in St. Petersburg. Usually she began with the bolero from "Les Vepres Siciliennes," or the shadow dance from "Dinorah." Mme.
Signorina Rossi now sang the Shadow Song from "Dinorah;" then she sang the Jewel Song from "Faust;" she sang "Caro nome" from "Rigoletto," or anything else that he could suggest; and her runs and shakes and scale passages were delivered with a freedom and precision that again and again called forth his applause. "And you have never sung in public, Nina?" he asked.
The repetition of the Domine Salvum at the end of the scene, which bursts forth abruptly in a different key, is full of color and character. The story of Le Pardon de Ploërmel is interesting. It was first called Dinorah, a name which Meyerbeer picked up abroad.
He refuses to go on, and a spirited duet ensues between them, which is interrupted by the entrance of Dinorah and her goat. The act closes with the fall of Dinorah, who attempts to cross the bridge, into the torrent, and her rescue by Höel, to the accompaniment of a storm set to music. The scene, though melodramatic, is very strong in its musical effects.
And then calls of business intervening, the bells have to give up their private jangle, resume their professional duty, and sing their hourly chorus out of Dinorah. What a prodigious distance those bells can be heard! I was awakened this morning to their tune, I say. I have been hearing it constantly ever since. And this house whence I write, Murray says, is two hundred and ten miles from Antwerp.
I was held up there for three days, during which time I secured pictures of the steamer Dinorah, which limped into port after being torpedoed, of a sailing vessel which had struck a mine, and some interesting scenes on board French torpedo boat destroyers as they returned from patrolling the Channel.
The festivity is interrupted by a thunder-storm, during which Les Herbiers, the dwelling-place of Dinorah, is destroyed by lightning. Dinorah is in despair. Höel determines to make good the loss, and upon the advice of Tonick, an old wizard, resolves to go in quest of a treasure which is under the care of the Korigans, a supernatural folk belonging to Brittany.
The second act opens with a drinking-song by wood-cutters, and as they withdraw, Dinorah enters, seeking Höel. She sings a tender lament, which, as the moonlight falls about her, develops into the famous "Shadow Song," a polka mazurka, which she sings and dances to her shadow.
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