Great Singers, Second Series | Page 7

grace. Her
carriage was exceedingly noble, and the face more expressive than
handsome; her hair was black and glossy, and always worn in a simple
style. The eyes were dark and luminous, the teeth white and regular,
and the countenance, habitually pensive in expression, was mutable in
the extreme, and responsive to every emotion and feeling of the heart.
To quote from Mr. Chorley: "She may not have been beautiful, but she
was better than beautiful, insomuch as a speaking Spanish human
countenance is ten times more fascinating than many a faultless
angel-face such as Guido could paint. There was health of tint, with but
a slight touch of the yellow rose in her complexion; great mobility of
expression in her features; an honest, direct brightness of eye; a

refinement in the form of her head, and the set of it on her shoulders."
When she was reproached by Fetis for using ad captandum effects too
lavishly in the admonition: "With the degree of elevation to which you
have attained, you should impose your opinion on the public, not
submit to theirs," she answered, with a laugh and a shrug of her
charming shoulders: "Mon cher grognon, there may perhaps be two or
three connoisseurs in the theatre, but it is not they who give success.
When I sing for you, I will sing very differently." Mme. Malibran,
buoyed up on the passionate enthusiasm of the French public, essayed
the most wonderful and daring flights in her song. She appeared as
_Desdemona, Rosina_, and as Romeo in Zingarelli's opera--characters,
of the most opposing kind and two of them, indeed, among Pasta's
masterpieces. It was said that, "if Malibran must yield the palm to Pasta
in point of acting, yet she possessed a decided superiority in respect of
song"; and, even in acting, Malibran's grace, originality, vivacity,
piquancy, spontaneity, feeling, and tenderness, won the heart of all
spectators. Such was her versatility, that the _Semi-ramide_ of one
evening was the Cinderella of the next, the Zerlina of another, and the
Desdemona of its successor; and in each the individuality of conception
was admirably preserved. On being asked by a friend which was her
favorite rôle, she answered, "The character I happen to be acting,
whichever it may be."
In spite, however, of the general testimony to her great dramatic ability,
so clever and capable a judge as Henry Chorley rated her musical
genius as far higher than that of dramatic conception. He says: "Though
creative as an executant, Malibran was not creative as a dramatic artist.
Though the fertility and audacity of her musical invention had no limits,
though she had the power and science of a composer, she did not
establish one new opera or character on the stage, hardly even one
first-class song in a concert-room." This criticism, when closely
examined, may perhaps indicate a high order of praise. Mme. Malibran,
as an artist, was so unique and original in her methods, so incomparable
in the invention and skill which required no master to prompt or
regulate her cadences, so complex in the ingenuity which blended the
resources of singing and acting, that other singers simply despaired of

imitating her effects, and what she did perished with her, except as a
brilliant tradition. In other words, her utter superiority to the
conventional made her artistic work phenomenal, and of a style not to
be perpetuated on the stage. The weight of testimony appears to be that
Mme. Malibran was, beyond all of her competitors, a singer of most
versatile and brilliant genius, in whom dramatic instincts reigned with
as dominant force as ability of musical expression. The fact, however,
that Mme. Malibran, with a voice weak and faulty in the extreme in one
whole octave of its range, and that the most important (between F and
F), was able by her matchless skill and audacity in the forms of
execution, modification, and ornament, to achieve the most brilliant
results, might well blind even a keen connoisseur by kindling his
admiration of her musical invention, at the expense of his recognition
of dramatic faculty.
It was characteristic of Mme. Malibran that she fired all her
fellow-artists with the ardor of her genius. Her resources and
knowledge were such that she could sing in any school and any
language. The music of Mozart and Cimarosa, Boïeldieu and Eossini,
Cherubini and Bellini, Donizetti and Meyerbeer, furnished in equal
measure the mold into which her great powers poured themselves with
a sort of inspired fury, like that of a Greek Pythoness. She had an
artistic individuality powerful to create types of its own, which were
the despair of other singers, for they were incapable of reproduction,
inasmuch as they were partly forged from her own defects, transformed
by genius into beauties. In all those accomplishments