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She had taken lessons for two years in vocal and instrumental music in the best conservatories in Boston, George paying most of her expenses. For six years May had been the soprano singer in the highest paid quartette in Harrisville. Though she occasionally hoped for a musical education abroad, yet these hopes had all flown away.
But it contains more low notes and almost as many high ones, unless in the latter respect one compares it with florid soprano voices of the phenomenal order. Otherwise, so far as the high notes are concerned, the difference lies in quality rather than in compass.
"Will ces dames desire a salon there is un vrai petit bijou empty just now," murmured a voice in a purring soprano, through the iron opening of the cashier's desk. Another voice was crying out to us, as we wound our way upward in pursuit of the jewel of a salon. "And the widow, La Veuve, shall she be dry or sweet?"
As a vocalist, it was agreed that her singing had the volubility, ease, and musical sweetness of a bird: her execution was remarkable for velocity. She had thus an organ of the most extensive compass known in the register of the true soprano.
Even political principle must have been in danger of relaxation under such circumstances; and the violin, faithful to rotten boroughs, must have been tempted to fraternize in a demoralizing way with a reforming violoncello. In that case, the linnet-throated soprano and the full-toned bass singing, "With thee delight is ever new, With thee is life incessant bliss,"
"How do you think Florrie is looking?" he asked in a low tone of Gabriella, while his wife's laugh, high, shrill, penetrating in its dry soprano quality, fluted loudly on the opposite side of the table. Beside Patty's patrician loveliness, as serene and flawless as that of a marble goddess, Florrie appeared cheap, common, and merely pretty to Gabriella.
It is customary in all first-class choirs for the male singers to furnish candy for the lady singers, and the other day the tenor went to a candy factory and had a peppermint lozenger made with about half a teaspoonful of cayenne pepper in the centre of it. On Christmas he took his lozenger to church and concluded to get even with the soprano if he died for it.
"They be! and in their nighties, too!" she added in a horrified whisper. One of the boys had a solo in the anthem that morning, and as the clear, pure soprano rose higher and higher, Miss Wetherby gazed in undisguised awe at the young singer. She noted the soulful eyes uplifted devoutly, and the broad forehead framed in clustering brown curls.
The head master of the school was a musician, and he discovered one day that his unruly pupil could sing. He was an expert in the development of the boy soprano and he soon realized that in young Caruso he had a veritable treasure. He was shrewd enough to keep his discovery to himself for some time, for he determined to profit by the boy's extraordinary ability.
After the opening prayer, the young preacher suggested that, as long as the speakers were not quite ready, the audience should "raise a hymn." "He's got a fine voice," whispered Miss Hazy; "I heared 'em say he was the gentleman soprano at a down-town church." When the religious exercises were completed, the audience settled into a state of pleasurable anticipation.
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