Great Singers, Second Series / Malibran To Titiens

ve been mentioned in previous sketches. But there was one great tenor of the French stage, Nourrit, who, though he died shortly after Mme. Viardot's en

ble to write a libretto, compose the music to it, lead the orchestra, and sing the tenor r?le in it, with equal facility. His first appearance was in Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride," in 1821, his age then being nineteen. Gifted with remarkable intelligence and ambition, he worked indefatigably to overcome his defects of voice, and perfect his equipment as an artist. Manuel Garcia, the most scientific and exacting of singing teachers, was the maestro under whom Nourrit acquired that large and noble style for which he became eminent. He soon

popularized the songs of Schubert, and otherwise softened the French prejudice against modern German music. In private life this great artist was so witty, genial, and refined, that he was a favorite guest in the most distinguished and exclusive salons. When Duprez was engaged at the opera it severely mortified Nourrit, and, rather than divide the honors with a new singer, he resigned his position as first tenor at the Académie, where he so long had been a brilliant light. His farewell to the French public, April 1, 1837, was the most flattering and enthusiastic ovation ever accorded to a French artist, but he could not be induced to reconsider his purpose. He was professor of lyric declamation at the Conservatoire, but this position, too, he resigned, and went away with the design of making a musical

g minds of his age. He himself never visited the United States, but his yo

ed from the stage, and his successor again, Roger, who, though a brilliant singer, was far inferior to the other two in creative intellectuality, appeared on the scene. Chorley asserts that Du-prez was the only artist he had ever seen and heard whose peculiar qualities and excellences would have enabled him to do entire musical and drama

atic singing, but, recognizing his own faults and studying the great models of the day, among them Nourrit, whom he was destined to supplant, he finally impressed himself on the public as the leading dramatic singer of France. According to Fetis and Castil-Blaze, he ne

nor r?les, among which may be mentioned those of "Benvenuto Cellini," "Les Martyrs," "La Favorita," "Dom Sebastien," "Otello," and "Lucia." Duprez was insignificant, even repellent in his appearance, but, in spite of these defects, his tragic passion and the splendid intelligenc

wildest, quaintest, most spontaneous comedy ever born of mirth's most airy and tameless humor. Those who saw Ronconi's acting in this country saw the great artist as a broken man, his powers partly wrecked by the habitual dejection which came of domestic suffering and professional reverses, but spasmodic gleams of his old energy still lent a deep interest to the work of the artist, great even in his decadence. In giving some idea of the impression made by Ronconi at his best, we can not do better than quote the words of an able critic: "There have been few such examples of terrible courtly tragedy in Italian opera as Signor Ronconi's Chevreuse, the polished demeanor of his earlier scenes giving a fearful force of contrast to the latter ones when the torrent of pent-up passion nears the precipice. In spite of the discrepancy between all our ideas of serious and sentimental music and the old French dresses, which we are accustomed to associate with the Dorantes and Alcestes of Molière's dramas, the terror of the last scene when (between his teeth almost) the great artist uttered the line-'Suir uscio tremendo lo sguardo figgiamo'-clutching th

ame critic quoted above says: "One could write a page on his Barber in Rossini's master-work; a paragraph on his Duke in 'Lucrezia Borgia,' an exhibition of dangerous, suspicious, sinister malice such as the stage has rarely shown; another on his Podesta in 'La Gazza Ladra' (in these two characters bringing him into close rivalry with Lablach