CHAPTER XXIV.
[A MUSIC-LESSON.]
Following the advice of the little Italian conductor of the orchestra, Stella refers to him in order to procure more reasonable terms from Signor della Seggiola for her singing-lessons.
These 'more reasonable terms' are twenty-five francs for an hour abbreviated at both ends, and sixty francs a month for a share in the singing-class,--that is, in the musical dissertations which Signor della Seggiola holds three times a week for six or seven pupils in a small room in the Gérard piano-building.
For the sake of those who consider twenty-five francs an hour a tolerably high price for lessons, and who are inclined to regard the leader's recommendation as a humbug, it may be well to state that twenty-five francs is really a lowered price, and that dilettanti usually pay from thirty to thirty-five francs for a private lesson from della Seggiola.
It is with the maestro's wife that Stella makes the business arrangement, since della Seggiola himself--an artist, an idealist, a child--understands nothing about money. He evidently labours under the delusion that he gives the lessons for nothing, since he does not take the slightest pains to give his scholars an honest equivalent in valuable instruction for their twenty-five, thirty, or thirty-five francs.
As we already know, Stella is tolerably familiar with the singing-teachers of many lands: she knows that, as is the case also with dentists, they all abuse one another and testify the same horror at the misdeeds of their predecessors, declaring with the same tragic shake of the head that it will be necessary to begin with the A, B, C,--that is, with Concone's solfeggi, and that it is indispensable for the scholar that she should procure the work upon the art of singing with which the new teacher, as well as his predecessor, has enriched musical literature. Stella already possesses five exhaustive works upon the 'Bel Canto,' 'L'Art lyrique,' 'L'Art du Chant,' and so forth; each cost twenty francs and contains a more or less valuable collection of solfeggi. Some of these volumes are adorned with the portrait of the author, others have prefaces in which some famous man, such as Rossini, for example, recommends the work to the public as something extraordinary, something destined by its intrinsic merit to outlast the Pyramids.
Delia Seggiola's work differs from all these clumsy compositions. Adorned neither with the portrait of the author nor with a preface by a celebrity, it displays upon its first page the profile of a human being cut in half,--an imposing proof of the maestro's anatomical knowledge, as well as of his close study of the physical conditions of a true training of the voice.
The large and magnificently-bound volume contains no series of solfeggi, but simply some scanty, musically impossible fiorituri, or musical examples borrowed from other works, which swim like little islands in an ocean of text. As Signora della Seggiola expresses herself, her husband's volume is no compilation of senseless solfeggi, but a Bible for the lovers of song.
A Bible for those who believe in della Seggiola's infallibility.
At the private lessons--the maestro gives these, of course, only at his own home--the accompaniments are played by an ambitious young musician who has once been with Strakosch on a tour; in the class, Fräulein Fuhrwesen accompanies, her impresario having postponed for the present the concert tour in South America.
Della Seggiola never touches the piano himself. He is a broad-shouldered, jolly Italian, with a big, kindly, smiling face, and a black velvet cap.
Without ever having possessed even a tolerably good voice, he ranked for a time among the distinguished singers of the world. His fine singing is, however, of little use to his pupils.
He passes the time of the lessons chiefly in reading aloud chapters from his 'Bible,' while the accompanist, with unflagging enthusiasm, praises the wisdom of the work; then the pupil sings some trifle, della Seggiola meanwhile gazing at her with a solemn air, sometimes grimacing to show the position of the lips, or tapping alternately her throat and her chest, exclaiming, "Ne serrez pas!" or "Soutenez! soutenez!" Then he directs the pupil to rest, tells something funny, clicks with his tongue, throws his velvet cap into the air, and--kling-a-ling-ling Signora della Seggiola gives the signal that the lesson is over.
The class is a rather more serious and artistic affair than the private lessons, from the fact that there are no different prices to be paid here, but that every one--with the exception of a protégé of Signora della Seggiola's, a barytone from Florence, who pays nothing--pays as in an omnibus the same sixty francs a month, whether the class consist of thirty or only three persons.
And the company reminds one somewhat of an omnibus. Against the background of usual shabbiness one or two brilliant social stars stand forth, making one wonder how they came there. It can hardly be asserted that even here among the disciples of della Seggiola, the only true prophet of his art, any great progress in singing is made. During the six weeks for which Stella has now belonged to the class it has been singing the same thing, only with less and less voice; that is all the difference.
Condemned by the formation of his throat, which is extraordinarily ill adapted to song, to spare the organ, della Seggiola never allows one of his faithful disciples to sing one natural, healthy note, but condemns them also to a constant mezzo-voce which cannot but contract the throat.
Thus artificially restrained, Stella's warm rich voice diminishes with extraordinary rapidity. When she complains to the maestro that this is so, he remarks that it is a very good sign, her great fault being that she has too much voice, and only when she has lost it entirely can the cultivation of a really bel canto begin.
This astounding assertion gives Stella food for reflection, and it occurs to her to-day as she sits at the piano preparing for the class-lesson and finds that two of her notes break as she sings the scale.
"Della Seggiola ought to be pleased with my progress," she says to herself, with some bitterness, and her heart beats hard as the constantly-recurring question arises in her mind, "If I should really lose my voice----? But where is the use of thinking of it?" she answers herself, with a shrug. The clock on the chimney-piece, the one with the manchineel-tree, strikes a quarter of ten. "It is high time to go," the girl says aloud. Slipping on the still handsome sealskin jacket which her father had given her five years before for a Christmas-present, she hurries along the various thronged streets, broad and narrow, through the pale-yellow January sunshine, to her destination.
The 'hall' in the Gérard piano-warehouse, Rue du Mail, where della Seggiola holds his classes, is hardly more spacious than an ordinary room in Berlin or Vienna, and, being partly filled with pianos sewed up in linen, leaves something to be desired from an acoustic point of view. The lesson has already begun when Stella enters. Fräulein Fuhrwesen, in her tassel-bedecked water-proof, is seated at the piano, upon the lid of which the 'Bible' lies open. Della Seggiola, resting his right hand upon its pages, and gesticulating with his left, is delivering an inspiring discourse upon the art of song, while a tall, sallow young man, with very little hair upon his head, but all the more upon his face, is awaiting with ill-disguised impatience the moment when he can burst into song.
This young man's name is Meyer (pronounced Meyare): he is clerk in a banking-house, and is studying for the stage.
A second barytone, a young Italian, is also waiting with longing for his turn. He is the star of the class, a Florentine, who has wandered to Paris with his two sisters, who regularly come to the class with him. They are sallow and elderly, wear very large Rembrandt hats, which, as they privately inform Stella, they purchased in the Temple, sit on each side of their brother, and keep up a constant nod of encouragement.
In strict seclusion from the young men, and guarded by a gray-haired duenna, across whose threadbare brown sacque she gaily ogles the barytone from Florence, sits a dishevelled little soprano, the daughter of a diva and a journalist.
Of course she has no idea of going on the stage; she speaks with horror of the theatre, and thinks a dramatic career not at all comme il faut.
An elderly Englishwoman, quite copper-coloured, with very long teeth and the figure of a tallow dip, seems to be of a different opinion. She is just confessing in very problematical French to the barytone from Florence how much she repents not having voice enough 'pour remplir un opera,' and her eyes fill with tears.
Natalie Lipinski has not yet arrived.
With a pleasant greeting to the two sisters of the barytone, and to the crazy Miss Frazer, Stella passes as quietly as possible to her place.
After della Seggiola has ended his discourse, and Monsieur Meyare has finished his 'Dolcessi perduti,' Miss Frazer sings the waltz from 'Traviata' transposed a fifth lower than the original key, breathing very loud, and singing very low. In the middle of it she stops short, lays her red hand, covered to the knuckles with a knitted wristlet, upon her heart, and sighs.
"What is it?" asks della Seggiola, not without a certain impatience. "What is the matter?"
"This aria is so deeply affecting," sighs the Englishwoman; "it always gives me palpitation of the heart."
"That is very unfortunate," says della Seggiola, taking a pinch of snuff. "Pray consult a physician; he will prescribe digitalis."
"Oh, the doctor could not help me," Miss Frazer asserts, wagging her head to and fro with enthusiasm. "My nervous system is too highly strung. If my voice were only stronger I should certainly have a succès upon the stage,--parce que je suis très-passionnée."
Della Seggiola bites his lip. At this moment the door opens, Natalie Lipinski enters, and behind her--Stella can hardly believe her eyes--Zino Capito!
"Permit me to present to you my cousin, Prince Capito, Signor della Seggiola," says Natalie, in her fluent but hard-sounding Russian-French. "He hopes to be allowed to profit by your instructions."
Of course the lesson is interrupted. Miss Frazer's eyes, which always remind one more or less of a melancholy-minded rabbit, and which now wear a very sympathetic air, rest with benevolence upon the Prince, who offers della Seggiola his hand with the aplomb for which he is justly celebrated throughout Europe, hurriedly thanks him for the great pleasure he has given him by his art, and prays beforehand for indulgence and patience, since he is, as he maintains, a beginner,--only a beginner.
Natalie conscientiously presents him to the class, blundering, of course, with all the names.
He bows stiffly, looks directly over the gentlemen's heads, scans the ladies with a curious glance, and then goes directly to Stella, beside whom he takes his place, after bowing to her with the most attractive mixture of courtesy and deference. Without being deterred by Miss Frazer's starting off with her transposed song and getting through as much of it as asthma and palpitation of the heart will permit, he begins:
"I made an attempt to see you the day after meeting you at my sister's, but, unfortunately, in vain. Did you get my card?"
"Yes."
"I was so very sorry not to find the ladies at home. Might I be admitted some evening?"
"I will ask mamma; but----"
"And how have you amused yourself meanwhile?"
"Oh, I have been very gay this week; Madame de Rohritz took me with her once to the theatre and once to the Bois de Boulogne."
"And when Thérèse does not take you out a little do you devote your entire time to historical studies and to your singing?"
"Sometimes I sit about in the Tuileries,--I have made the acquaintance of an old governess, who chaperons me,--and sometimes I go to the Louvre, which I know as perfectly as ever a guide in Paris."
Is it by mere chance that just at this point of the conversation, which is carried on in an undertone, Fräulein Fuhrwesen turns and stares at the Prince and Stella?
Meanwhile, it is Natalie's turn to sing. Her song is the grand cavatina from 'I Puritani,' 'Qui la voce sua soave!'
Natalie is an odd little person, short, slender, undeveloped as to figure, with a face rather too sallow, but with regular delicate features and dazzling teeth. With a fanatical enthusiasm for art and a determination to go upon the stage she combines a fortune of some millions of roubles, and, what is in still more comical contrast with her proposed career, a strict unbending sense of propriety, far transcending the prudery of the most English of Englishwomen,--not that shy sense of propriety which is always on the defensive, but that which is quick to look down with aggressive contempt upon any infringement of the rules of decorum.
Too well bred to speak when a lady whom he knows, were she a hundred times his cousin, is singing, Zino listens with exemplary attention to the Bellini cavatina, not indeed without a merry twinkle of the eye now and then.
Natalie's voice is rather shrill, her Italian accent harsh; her rendering of the impassioned aria is strictly confined to following the musical directions, p.p., cresc., ritard., and so forth; even at the point where the inspiration of the love-stricken Elvira culminates in the words 'Vien' ti posa--vien' ti posa sul mio cor!' she never ceases to beat the time with her right hand.
After this brilliant outburst della Seggiola interrupts her. The Fuhrwesen lifts her hands from the keys, and Natalie looks inquiringly at the maestro, who takes a pinch of snuff and shakes his head.
"Très-bien, mon enfant," it is needless to say that this familiar address is very little to the taste of the haughty Russian,--"très-bien, mon enfant; you sing in excellent time, but you must try to infuse animation into your style. Fancy the situation,--half crazy with love and longing, you are calling out into the night, 'Ah, come--come to my heart!' You must sing that with--how shall I express it?--with more conviction, thus:"
The Fuhrwesen drums the accompaniment, and della Seggiola, stretching out his arms like angels' wings, throws back his head a little, and warbles, 'Qui la voce!'
Estimate as you please his method of instruction, all who still find delight in the old Italian traditions must admit his art in singing.
And Prince Zino--a musical Epicurean to his finger-tips, rejecting everything clumsy and indigestible in music,--Prince Zino, for whom Mozart is the only god of music and Rossini is his prophet--strokes his moustache, delighted, and calls "Bravo!" and della Seggiola bows.
The lesson continues to be quite interesting.
Signor Trevisiani, the barytone from Florence, sings something very depressing, with the refrain,--
'Maladetto sulla terra,
Condannato nel ceil sard.'
The little soprano sings, 'Plaisir d'amour,' and Zino perfectly, gravely, goes through a scale, swelling the notes, during which two sad facts are brought to light,--first, that he is the third barytone in the class,--della Seggiola had hoped for a tenor,--and, secondly, that he cannot read by note. Della Seggiola, however, praises the charming timbre of his voice, and asks if he may not send him a teacher to correct his defective reading; whereupon Fräulein Fuhrwesen declares herself ready to give the Prince lessons. He pretends not to hear this heroic proposition, seeming not even to perceive her; whereby he makes a mortal enemy of that extremely sensitive and irritable person.
The glory of the class is the closing performance,--the famous duet between Don Giovanni and Zerlina, rendered by Signor Trevisiani and Natalie Lipinski.
It would be difficult to imagine a more lugubrious Don Giovanni than the young man from Florence. He is freshly shaven, perhaps in honour of his part; his cheeks are covered with red scratches, like those of a German youth who bears about in his face the record of his bravery; his hair, artistically dishevelled about his forehead and ears, falls over his coat-collar at the back of his neck. Except for a grass-green cravat, he is dressed entirely in black, like the page in 'Marlbrook;' his costume, evidently provincial, comes from the same quarter of Paris that has produced his sisters' hats,--the Temple.
Much intimidated by his haughty Zerlina, his throat contracts so that his voice, naturally fine and resonant, comes from his dry lips hoarse and miserably thready. Although Natalie sings, as ever, in faultless time, the notes that should be in unison are far from sounding so, whereupon della Seggiola advises the singers to take each other's hands. Mademoiselle Lipinski edges away still farther from her Don Giovanni, and extends to him her finger-tips.
Della Seggiola makes them repeat the duo three times, does his best to make it go smoothly, gently entreats Zerlina to be more coquettish, orders Don Giovanni to be more seductive. In vain. Zerlina draws down the corners of her mouth and looks at the wall; Don Giovanni scratches his ear. The duo sounds worse and worse. Much irritated at this melancholy result, which she ascribes entirely to Signor Trevisiani's awkwardness, Natalie at last says crossly to the young Florentine, "I beg you not to torment me any more: it will never do!" Then across her shoulder to her cousin she explains, impatiently, "Zino, Signor Trevisiani is hoarse; you and I used to sing the duo together. Come, try it."
"If there is time," Zino says, with amiable readiness, taking his place beside his cousin.
There is really no time for it, as della Seggiola would have informed any one save the Prince. Twelve o'clock has struck, but he does not mention that fact to Zino. Hungry and resigned, he sits down beside the piano, his hands clasped upon his stomach, his eyes fixed upon the tips of his boots stretched out before him, prepared to endure the blessed duo for the fourth time. But what is this? He listens eagerly, all present listen, all eyes are riveted upon the Prince, from whose lips there flows such melody as we expect only from the greatest Italian singers.
Without paying any further attention to Zerlina, della Seggiola inquires at the close of the duo,--
"Do you sing the serenade also?"
"À peu près," says Zino, whereupon the Fuhrwesen strikes the first notes of the accompaniment, and he sings it.
The singers of the new high-art school, the interpreters of Wagner, curse out the notes at their auditors; Prince Zino smiles them at his hearers, and the strong infusion of irony in his smile only heightens the effect of his style.
Erect but unstudied in attitude, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his head slightly thrown back, he is the veritable personification of the gay, thoughtless bon-vivant, Mozart's Don Giovanni as the master created him.
As he ends, Miss Frazer, bathed in tears, rushes up to him with both hands held out, exclaiming, "Merci! merci!"
Stella, laughing, claps applause, and Signor Trevisiani gazes at him as if he longed to learn his art. But della Seggiola asks,--
"Where did you learn to sing, mon Prince?"
"Everywhere."
"From whom?"
"From no one."
"That's right!" exclaims Seggiola, forgetting all humbug in genuine artistic enthusiasm. "For, between ourselves be it said, singing is never taught."
And when the Prince laughs, and hopes on the contrary to profit much from the art of the maestro, the latter replies, with the inborn courtesy of his nation,--
"If you will kindly help me to reveal to my class here the beauty of song, you shall always be welcome, mon Prince. I can teach you nothing."
The lesson is over. Zino helps Stella and his cousin to put on their wraps, takes leave of della Seggiola with his brilliant smile and cordial pressure of the hand, of the rest with a very brief nod, and leaves the room with his two special ladies.
"A charming man, that Principe Capito," says della Seggiola, rubbing his hands delightedly. "And he can sing like Mario in his best days. I used to give his sister lessons."
"I have met him before in Vienna," Fräulein Fuhrwesen mutters. "He is an Italian, to be sure, but his arrogance he learned in Austria."