RUBINI.
GIAN BATTISTA RUBINI was born at Romano, a small town in the province of Bergamo, on the 7th of April, 1795. He is the youngest of three brothers, all tenor singers of considerable celebrity; the eldest, Jeremiah, has quitted the stage from inability to continue the fatigues of a theatrical life: the second, Giacomo is first tenor in the chapel of the king of Saxony, and is besides a stage singer of great talent. Their father was a small music-master, played the horn in the theatre, and to his other occupations added that of being a getter-up of fêtes and musical performances in the neighbouring churches and chapels. He had a complete corps of singers and players, with a collection of masses, vespers, motets, and litanies, all at the service of any chapter or convent that chose to hire them. Rubini, the father, was entrepreneur, and blew the horn—his three sons, as they grew up, were enlisted in his vocal corps; but as their voices were not always required, and he neither chose nor could afford to let them be idle, Jeremiah was taught to play the organ, and Giacomo and Gian Battista the violin, by which means his whole family quartet was in constant requisition.
At eight years of age the little Rubini had already enchanted divers convents of nuns by his performance of the Salve Regina, perched up on a high stool, which was necessary to elevate his head to the level of the violins. At ten, his father, diffident of his own powers as a singing-master, placed the child under one Don Santo, priest and organist of Adro, a town in the province of Brescia, who, at the expiration of a year, sent him back to his parents with the consoling assurance, that nothing would ever make him a singer, so they had better look about for some other trade or profession to bring him up to. The father, who thought he knew better the boy’s capacity, took him again under his own care, and succeeded so well, that he not long after invited the same Don Santo to hear a mass, in which his rejected scholar sang the Qui tollis in such a style, that the parent enjoyed at once the pleasure and revenge of forcing the old organist to admit that he was mistaken in the judgment he had so hastily pronounced.
In his twelfth year, Gian Battista made his début on the boards of the Romano Theatre, in a female character, and for his own benefit: his receipts, both in applause and money, were gratifying, and he soon after went to Bergamo, where he was engaged to play the violin between the acts of the comedy, and to sing in the chorus during the opera season. While here, a petite comédie was put in rehearsal, in one scene of which was a cavatina—but, alas! no one in the troop could sing: somebody suggested Rubini, and at length the manager offered him an extra five-franc piece to study and sing this troublesome air. The terms were accepted, and young Gian Battista’s performance created a complete furore in Bergamo. The song was composed by Lamberti; and Rubini is still fond of singing it occasionally, to remind him of his first success.
For some time after this, however, Rubini appears to have led the precarious and miserable life of a stroller; but at length, being in Milan in the year 1814, he met with a Marquis Belcredi, one of those numerous Italian counts, marquesses, &c., who follow sometimes the honourable occupation of engagement-brokers for the theatres, and not unfrequently even less reputable means of making money. By Belcredi he was offered an engagement, for the autumn season, of four months at Pavia, at the liberal salary of eleven crowns, or about 1l. 18s. a month. Rubini’s necessities would not allow him to refuse this offer: he went to Pavia, and distinguished himself so much that his success made a sensation even at Milan. Belcredi engaged him immediately for the carnival of 1815 at 1000 francs the season; and sent him to perform at Brescia, whence he transferred him for the spring season to the theatre of St. Moire, at Venice, at a salary of 2000 francs. Here he had an opportunity of singing with the bass Zamboni, and the contralto Mad. Marcolini, for whom Rossini wrote his Italiana in Algeri. Rubini next entered into an engagement with Barbaja, director of the theatres of Naples for six months, at eighty-four ducats (about 16l.) per month, with a clause providing that, at the end of the first three months, the engagement should be renewable for a year at the increased salary of 100 ducats a month. He sang at the Teatro dei Fiorentini with Pellegrini, and was rising in public favour, when Barbaja, instead of renewing his engagement at the higher salary, proposed to dismiss him entirely, and only consented to retain him on condition of his terms being lowered to seventy ducats. Rubini had many cogent reasons which made him anxious to remain at Naples: he naturally desired to improve the hold which he had already upon the public favour there; he found himself in the society of the celebrated tenor, Nozzari, a countryman of his own, from whom he received most valuable hints and lessons; and whose example, as Rubini carefully watched and imitated him, both as an actor and singer, was nearly, if not quite, as valuable as his instructions. He therefore accepted Barbaja’s terms,—saying, however, at the same time, with the consciousness of talent, ‘You take advantage of my present situation, but will have to pay for it before long.’
The getting up of La Gazza Ladra, in the carnival of 1819, is still remembered among the fasti of Roman theatricals. The duet between Giannetto and Ninetta, in the prison scene, ‘forse un di conoscerai,’ was constantly encored; and the Roman ladies, during the whole carnival, carried about with them to the balls puppets dressed in the costume of their favourite actor and actress.
From Rome, Rubini, still under engagements to Barbaja, returned to Naples, and thence crossed over to Palermo, where he sang with Donzelli and Lablache. His début in Sicily was in an opera of Mosca, which would never have survived the first night’s performance, but for a ruse of the singer. From the very beginning the poor maestro was hissed: piece after piece shared the same fate, until the principal tenor began his cavatina; the adagio, although it escaped hisses, made little impression on the audience; but the allegretto movement which followed called forth rounds of enthusiastic applause, which Mosca was only too happy to acknowledge and appropriate by repeated bows. The fact was, that Rubini, finding Mosca’s adagio passable, but his allegretto worse than bad, had insisted on substituting the similar movement from the air of Orestes, in Rossini’s Ermione, ‘Ah come mai nascondere.’ For ten days the deception remained undiscovered; and the Palermitans could hardly bestow praises enough on the author of so heavenly an allegretto. But, alas! on the eleventh a printed copy of the air arrived from Naples, and stripped poor Mosca of his borrowed plumes.
While at Palermo, Rubini was the hero, and narrowly escaped being the victim of an adventure as romantic, but fortunately for him not so fatal, as that of Stradella. On his arrival in Sicily he waited on a certain princess, to whom he had letters of recommendation, and was received with the kindness which talents and even his personal appearance seemed to deserve. In the evening, on coming before the audience, Rubini made a respectful inclination towards his fair patroness, and appeared to address towards her box his most touching passages and most brilliant roulades. In Sicily jealousy is as instantaneous as lightning, and vengeance follows it as rapidly as thunder the flash. The prince, who did not understand the musical homage paid to his wife, forthwith employed two bravoes to poignard the presumptuous primo tenore, and dispose of his body as usual in such cases—that is, by throwing it into the sea. Accordingly, on quitting the theatre, he was suddenly sprung upon by two men, who seized his arms, muffled his head in a cloak, and began to drag him towards the sea-shore. He had no power to call out, and if he had had, nobody attends to such calls in Sicily: in fact he had already made up his mind that his last cavatina in this world was sung, when, luckily for him, one of the bravi recognized his victim. He was an amateur, to whom Rubini had often given orders for the opera. So soon as he was aware who it was that he had engaged to exercise his profession upon, his heart failed him; and, instead of using his stiletto, he acquainted Rubini with the offence he had committed, set him at liberty, and recommended him to escape from Sicily without loss of time. On his return to Naples, Rubini heard, for the first time, Madlle. Chaumel, who was passing through that city in her way to fulfil an engagement at Palermo, and was so charmed with her voice and style, that he recommended Barbaja to retain her at Naples. Barbaja took the advice—Mad. Chaumel shone during two or three seasons a bright star at the St. Carlo and the Fondo; and the lady and Rubini so often enacted the lover and mistress, that at length they realised the illusion of the theatre, and became man and wife.
In 1824 Barbaja was removed from the management of the Neapolitan theatres; whereupon he migrated to Vienna, taking with him the whole corps of singers who were under engagements to him,—and amongst them Rubini and his wife. The company assembled in the Austrian capital, on this occasion, was perhaps the most numerous and splendid that was ever united at one time in one city. The prime donne amounted to nine, most of whom had already established a high reputation, and of whom the remainder nearly all have now attained the first rank in their profession; Sontag, Fodor, Mombelli, Rubini, Eckerlin, Ungher, Giudetta Grisi, Dardanelli, and Grimbaum. The tenors were David, Rubini, Donzelli, and Cicimira; and the basses, Lablache, Ambrogi, Botticelli, and Bassi. At the end of this brilliant season Rubini returned to Naples; and, in the autumn of 1825, made his first appearance at Paris, where his reception was perhaps more enthusiastic than in any other city he had visited. His performance in the Cenerentola, La Donna del Lago, Otello, and La Gazza Ladra, established him at once, in the judgment of the Parisian dilettanti, at the very summit of his profession, and gained him the appellation of Roi des tenors.
From Paris Rubini returned to Naples, and thence went to Milan, where the then new composer, Bellini, wrote the fine part of Gualtero in Il Pirata, especially for him. In the following year, 1827, he appeared in two new operas, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, and the Sonnambula of Bellini. Both these composers, in writing for Rubini, adopted a style which had been so long neglected that it appeared new. Instead of florid compositions, loaded with roulades and divisions, they limited themselves, in the airs and duets intended for him, to simple, graceful, and pathetic melodies, calculated to display to the greatest advantage his elocutionary and impassioned style[9].
In the summer of 1831, Rubini, together with his wife, appeared at the London Opera: he has since that withdrawn Mad. Rubini entirely from the stage, finding his own earnings, since he has been out of Barbaja’s clutches, quite sufficient for their joint support. For fifteen years he was at the command of this leviathan of the opera, who disposed of his voice and talents, and sent him to this capital or the other, according as it suited his own interest or combinations, and receiving for his exertions enormous sums, of which by far the greater part went to enrich the entrepreneur, not the singer. Before he was emancipated from Barbaja, the salary of himself and his wife was only (!) 60,000 francs (2500l.); the first year of his emancipation, his earnings amounted to 125,000 francs, upwards of 5200l. (!!)
In the autumn of 1831, Rubini again visited Paris, where he was received with renewed enthusiasm, and in which city he is still performing with undiminished popularity.