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I felt I ought to decline her proffered escort into the town, not considering myself sufficiently smart in my 'brigand-hat, but with the assurance, 'We all wear these brigand-hats here, she took my arm, and thus we reached Pauline Viardot's villa, where we were to dine, as my friend's own house was not yet quite ready.
Klindworth seemed particularly stirred to anger at the result. His own share was admirably executed; but he declared that he had been consumed with indignation at observing Viardot's lukewarm execution of her part, in which she was probably determined by the presence of Berlioz.
Ronconi is, we believe, still living, though no longer on the stage; but his memory will remain one of the great traditions of the lyric drama, so long as consummate histrionic ability is regarded as worthy of respect by devotees of the opera. Mme. Viardot's name is, perhaps, more closely associated with the music of Meyerbeer than that of any other composer.
When to this engrossing energy were added the most dazzling personal charms and a voice which as nearly reached perfection as any ever bestowed on a singer, it is no marvel that a continual succession of brilliant rivals was unable to dispute her long reign over the public heart. Vicissitudes of the Garcia Family. Pauline Viardot's Early Training. Indications of her Musical Genius.
Viardot's entrance on her lyric career, yet bore such relation to the Garcia family as to make a brief account of this gifted artist appropriate under this caption. Adolphe Nourrit, of whom the French stage is deservedly proud, was the pupil of Manuel Garcia, the intimate friend of Maria Malibran, and the judicious adviser of Pauline Viardot in her earlier years.
"You are right!" was Mme. Viardot's quick and heartfelt response to a friend by her side, while her eyes streamed with tears "you are right. It is like the 'Cenacolo' of Leonardo da Vinci at Milan, a wreck of a picture, but the picture is the greatest picture in the world." The Greatest German Singer of the Century. Her Characteristics as an Artist. Her Childhood and Early Training.
Viardot's nervousness was apparent to all. "She proved herself equal to Malibran," says a writer in the "Musical World," speaking of this performance; "there was the same passionate fervor, the same absorbing depth of feeling; we heard the same tones whose naturalness and pathos stole into our very heart of hearts; we saw the same abstraction, the same abandonment, the same rapturous awakening to joy, to love, and to devotion.
I improvised a special performance of the second act of my Tristan, in which Mme. Viardot was to share the singing parts with myself, and on which occasion my friendship for the latter received a considerable impetus; while for the pianoforte accompaniment I summoned Klindworth at my own expense from London. This exceedingly select performance took place in Mme. Viardot's house. Besides Mme.
Viardot's voice grows unconsciously upon you, until at last you are blind to its imperfections. The voice penetrates to the heart by its sympathetic tones, and you forget everything in it but its touching and affecting quality. You care little or nothing for the mechanism, or rather, for the weakness of the organ.
At the end of this time he went to Leipzig, where he met with Mendelssohn and played in a concert of Madame Viardot's. A few months later he appeared as a finished artist in a Gewandhaus concert, and played Ernst's "Otello Fantasie."
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