135.—A GREAT QUARTET.
The stories told of the prime donne are so many and so wonderful, that it is with relief we turn to the career of some of the opposite sex.
The great quartet of singers,—Rubini, Tamburini, Mario, and Lablache,—who were on the stage the first half of this century, have hardly been excelled in musical history. Every one of these men was an artist of the highest ability, and the records of their feats of vocalism might well fill a volume.
Though not a great actor, the first of this quartet, Rubini, captured his audiences by pure feats of vocalism. His command of his voice was beyond description. On one occasion, however, he overstepped the bounds of nature. He was singing a passage where he had to attack and hold with great power a high B flat, and he took the note with such force that the sudden contraction of the lungs resulted in a broken clavicle. In spite of this he finished his part in the opera. So great was his popularity that he for a time held a position in the opera at St. Petersburg at £20,000 a year.
It is told of Tamburini that when singing in Palermo during the carnival season of 1822, the Prima donna being scared from the house by the antics of the revelers, this great baritone donned her costume and took her part in the opera with the superb falsetto tones he had cultivated. Even in the duets he would sing his own notes in his strong baritone voice and then change to the falsetto for the lady's part. It need not be added that the carnival revelers were delighted with their success in procuring amusement.
Mario, of all the tenors one of the greatest, was an exception to the rule that great singers spring from the humble walks of life. He was an Italian count; but forsook the dignity of his inheritance for that career which nature had mapped out for him. His singing was noted for possessing that which Rubini lacked, i.e., a strong sense of the dramatic. He was not so successful in the flights of ornamentation to which Rubini was addicted, but this was more than compensated by his rendition of the arias of modern writers that required more artistic intelligence and poetry. He was a highly educated Italian gentleman, in this respect being the opposite of many who have perhaps been endowed with as fine powers of vocalization as himself.
The last of the quartet, Lablache, was in his way the most wonderful singer the world has possessed. His was a remarkably strong bass of over two octaves in compass. He was a very tall and strongly built man; indeed, so great was his strength that he took pleasure in carrying off singers from the stage under his arm, when the plot allowed of it. It was said of him, "he was gifted with personal beauty to a rare degree; a grander head was never more grandly set on human shoulders." His voice was the most powerful of any of which we have record; and his stage presence and artistic education made him the foremost bass singer of musical history. In this he was unique; there were none to rival him or dispute his claim to greatness. As a youth he sang at the funeral of Haydn and later at that of Beethoven. He was, when in England, the singing master of Queen Victoria.