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The soft-toned viol had deeply indented sides to permit a free use of the bow, was mostly supplied with frets like a guitar, and had usually from five to seven strings. Its different sizes corresponded with the soprano, contralto, tenor and bass of the human voice.
We have been twice to the San Carlo, which we were the more pleased to do, because when we were here before, that fine theatre was closed. The singing is so-so, and the tenor especially is gifted with limbs rather than with voice or ear. But there is a baritone worth hearing and a soprano, whom the Neapolitans delight to honour with hideous sounds of applause.
A dramatic soprano may be able to sing florid rôles, but never with the success of the soprano whose natural gifts are of the florid order. A Wagner singer rarely succeeds in the traditional Italian rôles, nor a singer of these in Wagner rôles. Lilli Lehmann always insisted that Norma was one of her great rôles, and craved the opportunity to sing it here.
However, there are many interesting and valuable things to be said about the voice in a general way. Speaking first of the classification of voices, many young singers are put much in doubt and dilemma because they are unable to determine what sort of voice they really possess, whether soprano, mezzo or contralto.
The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe admired this artificial form of voice almost to the exclusion of all others. His favourite singer, indeed, Pacchierotti, was a male soprano. But other breaks have been made with tradition, breaks which are not yet taken for granted.
His almost soprano voice, raised in clamorous benediction, followed her as she returned to the church, moving slowly with horrible loose slippers protecting its floor from her Christian feet. She always laughed in her mind when she wore those slippers and thought of what she was. This sanctuary of the unknown God must, it seemed, be protected from her because she was a Christian!
The concert was one of those fragmentary drearinesses that people endure because they are fashionable; tours de force on the piano, and fragments from operas, which have no meaning without the setting, with weary pauses of waiting between; there is the comic basso who is so amusing and on such familiar terms with the audience, and always sings the Barber; the attitudinizing tenor, with his languishing "Oh, Summer Night;" the soprano with her "Batti Batti," who warbles and trills and runs and fetches her breath, and ends with a noble scream that brings down a tempest of applause in the midst of which she backs off the stage smiling and bowing.
It was an unfortunate allusion, and Warble, smiling with an engaging smile, wheedled, "Pleathe, pleathe " "No," Petticoat said, inexorably, "if you eat all the time you'll get to look like that soprano. Howja like that?" "Do you care if I'm fat, Bill?" "Me? Why, I wouldn't care if you were as big as a house. You're my well, you're my soulmate." "Oh, I'm so had and glappy! It's sweet to be yours.
She looked at the chair by the ancient parlor organ and announced: "Yes, indeed, it'll do real well, thank you, Cap'n Jethro." Her voice was a sharp soprano with liquid gurgles in it "like pourin' pain-killer out of a bottle," this last still another quotation from the book of Zacheus. "All right," said Captain Jeth, "then we'll begin.
The learned individual who blows the organ may say that the comparative perfection attained in the orchestra is through the very consummate manner in which he "raises the wind"; the gentleman who manipulates upon its keys may think he is the primum mobile in the matter; the soprano may fancy she is the life of the whole concern; the heavy bass or the chief tenor may respectively lay claim to the honour; but the fact is, its amongst the lot, so that there may be a general rubbing on the question of service, and a reciprocal scratching on the point of ability.
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