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I even maintain that all is won, when as Victor Maurel says we regard them directly as the breath regulators, and relieve them of all overwork through the controlling apparatus of the chest-muscle tension.
Making allowance for the different art medium that the singing actor must work in, and despite the larger curves of operatic pose and gesture, Maurel kept astonishingly near to the characters he assumed. He was Shakespearian; his Falstaff was the most wonderful I ever saw."
The greatest singer of to-day, Shalyapin, has also his individual vocal mastery, closely resembling the sort that enabled Maurel to run such a gamut of emotions with such astonishing command and resource. "In fine, as every great artist is different from his compeers, there can be no fixed and fast standard of vocal mastery, except the mastery of doing a great thing convincingly."
The large audience of about fifteen hundred, contained some of the most famous among artists and men of letters"; and Maurel, with hands clasped about his knee, gazed before him into space, and we knew he was picturing in mental vision, the scene at the Sorbonne, which he had just recalled. After a moment, he resumed.
Did we not together listen to that voice and watch with breathless interest his investiture of Don Giovanni, in the golden days when Lilli Lehmann and the De Reszkes took the other parts. Was there ever a more elegant courtly Don, a greater Falstaff, a more intriguing Iago? In those youthful days, my friend's greatest ambition was to be able to sing and act like Maurel.
Never shall I forget her acting in "Griselidis." Yet for all the talent of these singers whom I have named, and among whom I should surely have placed the incomparable Maurel, whose Iago was superb, I think that the arts of singing and acting can seldom be happily married. They quarrel all the while!
As we examined the flower panel, he came and stood by us. "Painting is a great art," he said; "an art which requires profound study. I have been a close student of this art for many years and love it more and more." "M. Maurel aims now to express himself through the art of color and form, as he has always done through voice and gesture," remarked my friend.
"Again: I can think out the character and make a mental picture of it for myself, but how shall I project it for others to see? I have to convince myself first that I am that character I must identify myself with it; then I must convince those who hear me that I am really that character." Maurel rose and moved to the center of the room. "I am to represent some character Amonasro, let us say.
The hero of Mozart's Don Giovanni, who could sing his music as perhaps no one else has ever done, would not be likely to have much patience with the modern style of explosive vocal utterance. "How do you preserve your voice and your repertoire?" I questioned. M. Maurel gazed before him thoughtfully. "It is entirely through the mind that I keep both.
The orchestra is better, Maurel is superb, Capoul is still better, and Campanini is very admirable. We miss Jamet very much in Mephisto, but every one else is better than before. The house is not gay it misses many of its old habitués. Five empty boxes in a row tell of the financial troubles.
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