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You cannot clearly recall the sublime peak of Mont Blanc, the roaring curve of Niagara, the vast dome of St. Peter's. The music of Patti's crystalline voice has left no distinct echo in your remembrance, and the blossoming of the century-plant is dimmer than the shadow of a dream.
Meanwhile, in the common dressing-room beyond the wings, there was being enacted a scene which if slightly less tumultuous in expression was considerably more dangerous in quality. A quick word went the round of the stars' private rooms; it penetrated to the sanctum of the Japanese wrestlers; it came to the ear of the manager himself: "The Little Patti's struck!"
The winter season had begun; and all those wanderers who had been basking through the autumn under the blue skies that roof the Pyrenees, or dawdling away existence in German gambling-saloons, or climbing Alpine peaks, or paddling down the Danube, flocked back to the central city of civilization in time to assist at Patti's reappearance in the Rue Lepelletier, or to applaud a new play of Sardou's at the Gymnase.
But if the major is prepared to drop a penitent tear over the ashes of Clorinda, I shall not whisper to him that the urn is empty." Even Adelina Patti's singing, for the next half-hour, but half availed to divert me from my quickened curiosity to behold Madame Blumenthal face to face.
After I had known the two families one hour, these people treated me as though I were their intimate friend; Costanza's younger brother, they called me. I had a seat in their carriage every day, when the ladies drove out in the Bois de Boulogne; they never had a box at the Italian opera, where Adelina Patti's first notes were delighting her countrymen, without sending me a seat.
"Ah, yes, I love the coloratura, it suits me; I have always studied for that I know all the old Italian operas. For the coloratura music you must make the voice sound high and sweet like a bird singing and soaring. You think my voice sounds something like Patti's? Maybe. She said so herself. Ah, Patti was my dear friend my very dear friend I loved her dearly.
Although Lilli Lehmann's voice is almost as mellow in timbre as Patti's, and much richer and warmer, we never think of it as a bird-like or vague instrumental tone, but as a medium for the expression of definite dramatic emotion. And herein lies the chief difference between the Italian and the German schools.
Patti's concert came near being nipped in the bud by an incident that has never been printed.
Her voice, a rich soprano, even and true, rose and fell, now soft, now strong, but always filling the building, pouring around us floods of music. I had heard Patti's 'Home, sweet Home, and of all singing that alone affected me as did this. At the end of the first verse the few women in the church and some men were weeping quietly; but when she began the words
Remarkable things, doubtless; but I cannot answer for it, for in the midst of the explanation the curtain rose again. "You can't be a great artist without a great passion!" Madame Blumenthal was affirming. Before I had time to assent Madame Patti's voice rose wheeling like a skylark, and rained down its silver notes. "Ah, give me that art," I whispered, "and I will leave you your passion!"
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