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We did not make perfect music when these domestic entertainments were in vogue, but we helped make happy homes and clean lives. We used to sing all of us together upon the country porch on summer nights, not disdaining "Nelly Was a Lady" and the "Old Kentucky Home," and sea songs and love songs and battle songs that had thundering choruses in which bassos told mightily.
It was a great favorite with Lablache, and its magnificent performance by Grisi, Mario, Tamburini, and the king of bassos, is a gala reminiscence of English and French opera-goers. We quote an opinion also from another able authority: "The drama of 'Gli Orazi' is taken from Corneille's tragedy 'Les Horaces. The music is full of noble simplicity, beautiful melody, and strong expression.
"I'm going to cut 'nough carpet-rags this winter to last you a whole year," said the little girl, "'cause next summer you won't have me any more. I'm I'm going to college." THE teacher, jogging out of the barn-yard to the ash-lane, heard a hearty roll of bassos from the kitchen, and did not doubt but that he was its target.
It was during her London engagement of the same year that Mme. Malibran became acquainted with the greatest of bassos, Lablache, who made his début before an English public in the rôle of Geronimo, in "Il Matrimonio Segreto." The friendship between these two distinguished artists became a very warm one, that only terminated with Malibran's death.
The soprani tenors, bassos, attack the allegro furioso with cries of rage, and of a dramatic 6/8 time they make it 6/8 quadrille time. Then they rush out, bellowing, "At midnight, Noiselessly, God wills it, Yes, At midnight." At this moment the audience start to their feet. Everybody is agitated in the boxes, the pit, the galleries.
Lablache, the King of Operatic Bassos. His Career as an Artist. His Wonderful Genius as Singer and Actor. Advent of Mario on the Stage. His Intimate Association with Mme. Grisi as Woman and Artist. Incidents of Mario's Life and Character as an Artist. Grisi's Long Hold on the Stage for more than a Quarter Century. Her American Tour. Final Retirement from her Profession.
The sopranos took a B flat on the last note, while the tenors and altos rambled up and down the scale and the bassos bombarded the theme with their deepest chest tones. In the meantime the traveler had been washed out to sea. As the next wave brought him to the strand the company advanced once more a short distance, and began. "In the name of Mercy, help me!" screamed the drowning man.
For mezzos and baritones about the same system is followed, the exercises being sung a major third or so lower. In the case of contraltos and bassos, the voice is usually trained from the middle in both directions. Most teachers favor the "chest voice" for singers of these types throughout the entire compass.
"And so I turned, canny for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional falsetto, to Milton and Marlow, bassos profundo. I gave ear to Browning chatting, Byron declaiming, and Wordsworth droning.
Our Sabine Farm was surrounded by others and there was a neighborhood hymn to the dawn that it took us some time to really enjoy if we ever did. Sopranos roosters; altos pigeons, and ducks; tenors goats; bassos cows, and one donkey. There was nothing missing to make a full, rich volume of sound.
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