But if extravagant homage was paid to the queens of song much was also expected of them. The truth of this is seen in the episode chronicled under the heading "Persiani at Sea":—
An enthusiastic audience is assembled to hurrah Persiani—to cry brava—to throw bouquets, etc. The crowd open their mouths to receive the honeyed voice of a prima donna, and Doctor Wardrop throws blue pills into them. The following notice proves the truth of our metaphor:—
"Madame Persiani continues to suffer so severely from the effects of sea-sickness, accompanied with violent retching, that it is impossible for her to appear this evening.
"James Wardrop, M.D."
On this, says The Times, "the audience were at first disposed to grumble, and gave many signs of dissatisfaction."
The audience were perfectly right. They were justified in becoming very savage at the violent retching of a sea-sick St. Cecilia; and had she had the effrontery to die, they would, we are convinced, have been perfectly exonerated, by all the laws of English freedom, in breaking the chandeliers and tearing up the benches!
THE SKATING BALLET
The private life of operatic celebrities was as a rule no concern of the opera-going public, but the line was drawn at Lola Montez, whose engagement to dance at Drury Lane in 1843 was cancelled in deference to general protests. The ballet was an integral part and commanding attraction of the old Italian opera. The most wonderful account of this "explosion of all the upholsteries" has been given by Carlyle at a slightly later date. In the 'forties the shining lights were Taglioni—whose skirts were quite long—Cerito, Fanny Ellsler and Carlotta Grisi, cousin of the prima donna, a wonderful quartet on whose gyrations and levitations "Jenkins" showered all the adulatory epithets in his polyglot vocabulary. The skating ballet in Le Prophète, popular in 1849, is the subject of a charming little sketch in Punch, and this production was notable vocally for the appearance of Pauline Viardot-Garcia, the greatest actress, the most accomplished and enlightened musician, and the most interesting personality of all nineteenth century prime donne. Henriette Sontag, however, was the popular operatic heroine of the year, graceful, charming and still handsome, though no longer in her first youth,[31] a perfect singer, an incomparable Susanna (as Punch admitted), though lacking dramatic force—Sontag, of whom Catalani said that she was the first in her genre, but that her genre was not the first.
Jenny Lind
Great singers came and went but Punch never wavered in his allegiance to Jenny Lind. Though her career on the lyric stage was brief, she is more often and more enthusiastically mentioned than any other singer, and for reasons which are revealed in the following lines:—
THE NIGHTINGALE THAT SINGS IN THE WINTER
Sweetest creature, in song without rival or peer,
Far more inwardly vibrate thy notes than the ear,