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Updated: May 1, 2025
No Russian opera, it seemed, "Russlan and Ludmilla" possibly excepted, had gone home to the hearts of the Russian people as had this piece of youthful work, which, though its merit was perfectly genuine, was by no means free from faults. At the opera-house itself, every one, from the Menschikov to Merelli and the chorus, was in a state of beaming delight.
But alas! What wretchedness it was to listen, day by day, from his empty box, to the throaty warblings of Finocchi whose pronunciation of Russian was as near Chinese or Hebrew as the Slavic tongue: to argue vainly with La Menschikov, the soprano, who, to Ivan's unbounded disgust, used every vocal trick invented by the melodramatic Italians, from a revolting tremolo, and a barefaced falsetto to an incorrigible persistence in the appoggiatura, an affectation peculiarly unadapted to Ivan's rich, strong style.
To the indignation of the prima-donna, however, the Menschikov, who, in the end, had risen to no small heights in her interpretation of the hapless Marie, was allowed to retain the rôle. But Ivan had the relief of seeing Finocchi of the hopeless ear replaced by Limpadello, through whom the quartet was now firmly united and became the sensation of the whole, sensational piece.
Ostrovsky, the librettist, was behind the scenes, still on his knees before the Menschikov, in a mad endeavor to obtain her promise to abstain from the French habit of adding an e to the end of every word.
And the last thing he had heard, on the previous day, as he fled the theatre, had been the loud echoes of the latest quarrel between Mesdames Menschikov and Castello, in which the former sat alternately reviling her companion and wailing that her voice, on the morrow, would be a mere hoarse shred.
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