Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
He heard Auber and Rossini operas and Rolla, the Italian violinist, and listened with delight to Dotzauer and Kummer the violoncellists the cello being an instrument for which he had a consuming affection. Rubini, the brother of the great tenor, he met, and was promised important letters of introduction if he desired to visit Italy.
The Italian public, in spite of such criticism, very soon accepted the opera of "Otello" as the greatest serious opera ever written for their stage. It owed much, however, to the singers who illustrated its rôles. Mme. Colbran, afterward Rossini's wife, sang Desdemona, and Davide, Otello. The latter was the predecessor of Rubini as the finest singer of the Rossinian music.
A splendid musical intelligence, however, repaired the lack of early teaching, though, perhaps, a voice less perfect in itself would have fared badly through such desultory experiences. Like so many of the great singers of the modern school, Rubini first gained his reputation in the operas of Bellini and Donizetti, and many of the tenor parts of these works were expressly composed for him.
Lamartine read his "Meditations" and Delphine Gay her first poems. Rachel recited, and Pauline Viardot, Garcia, Rubini, and Lablache sang. Delacroix, David, and Gerard represented the world of art, and the visitors from the grand monde were too numerous to mention.
After dinner, Rubini, unasked, sang two of his most admired airs; and the Prince, to testify his gratification, offered him a basket of Johannisberg, "to drink my health," he laughingly said, "when you reach your château of Bergamo." Rubini accepted the friendly offering, and begged permission to bring Mme. Rubini, before quitting the north of Europe, to visit the fine château.
Rubini and Tamburini were with her in the cast, and the same great artists participated also with her in the performance of "Lucia," which set the final seal of her artistic won h in the public estimate. She also appeared in London in the following year in "Sonnambula."
When the dowager collects "her dear five hundred friends" to parade before the fresh young heirs her wax-light lovely daughters when all is glory, gallopade, and Gunter when Rubini warbles smallest, and Lablanche is heard as thunder on the stairs speak, tradesmen, ye who best can tell, the closeness that has catered for that feast; tell it out, ye famished milliners, ground down to sixpence on a ball-dress bill; whisper it, ye footmen, with your wages ever due; let Gath, let Askelon re-echo with the truth, that extortion is the parent of extravagance!
The production of Bellini's last opera, "I Puritani," in 1834, was one of the great musical events of the age, not solely in virtue of the beauty of the work, but on account of the very remarkable quartet which embodied the principal characters Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and La-blache.
The same praise may be awarded to his method of producing his tones, and all that varied and complicated skill which comes under the head of vocalization. Rubini had a chest of uncommon bigness, and the strength of his lungs was so prodigious that on one occasion he broke his clavicle in singing a B flat.
There is not a single basso living to suggest Lablache, not a tenor to revive the triumphs of Rubini, Mario, Giuglini or the subject of the present article. Gustave Roger, the celebrated French tenor, who so long reigned a king at the Grand Opéra of Paris, was a born Parisian.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking