Let me give you the history of his voice as Madame Delsarte herself lately told it to me. I must go back to his early days of study and débuts.
Delsarte entered the Conservatory at the age of fourteen. Too young to endure the fatigue of the regular school-exercises, his voice must have received an injury. When the singer offered his services at the Opera Comique---then Salle Vantadour--he was told that his voice was hollow, that it had no carrying power. This was perhaps partly the fault of the building, whose acoustic properties were afterward improved. However, thanks to the flexibility which his voice retained and his perfect vocalization, the pretended insufficiency was overlooked, and the young tenor was admitted.
His mode of singing pleased the skilled public, and the special abilities of this strong artistic organism--as I have already observed--did not pass unnoted.
A dilettante, to whom I mentioned Delsarte long after this time, said: "What you tell me does not surprise me, I heard him at his first appearance, and he has lingered in my memory as an artist of the greatest promise. He was more than a singer; he had that nameless quality, which is not taught in any school and which marks a personality; a tone of which nothing, before or since, has given me the least idea."
The tenor, from the Comic Opera, went to the Ambigu Theatre, and thence to the Variétés, where an attempt was being made to introduce lyric works. François Delsarte's dramatic career did not, however, last more than two years. During these various changes--I cannot give the exact dates--this artist, on his way to glory, was forced to gain a living by the least aristocratic of occupations. If he did not go so far as Shakespeare in humility of profession (the English poet was a butcher's boy), he strangely stooped from that native nobility--great capacity,--which must yet have claimed, in his secret soul, its imprescriptible rights.
If this was one more suffering, added to all the rest, it had its good side. It was, perhaps, the source of the artist's never failing kindness, of that gracious reception which he never hesitated to bestow on anyone--from the Princess de Chimay and many other titled lords and ladies, down to Mother Chorré, the neighboring milk-woman, whom he held, he said, "in great esteem and friendship."
I return to his teaching. His lectures were given in Rue Lamartine and Rue de la Pépinière. There was always--aside from the school--an audience made up of certain never failing followers and of a floating population. The birds of passage sometimes came with a very distinct intention to criticise; but if they did not readily understand the learned deductions, they went away fascinated by what the professor had shown them of his brilliant changes into every type of the repertory which he held up as a model. Enthusiasm soon triumphed over prejudice. Envy, alone, persisted in hostility.
These meetings were genuine artistic feasts. They were held at night, at the same hour as the theatres, and no play was preferable to them in the eyes of the truly initiated. They were a transcendent manifestation of all that is most elevated, which art can produce.
Here is an extract from a newspaper, which I find among the notes sent me:
"I heard him repeat, one evening, 'Iphigenia's Dream,' at the request of his audience. All were held trembling, breathless by that worn and yet sovereign voice. We were amazed to find ourselves yielding to such a spell; there was no splendor and no theatric illusion. Iphigenia was a teacher in a black frock coat; the orchestra was a piano striking, here and there, an unexpected modulation; this was all the illusion--and the hall was silent, every heart throbbed, tears flowed from every eye. And then, when the tale was told, cries of enthusiasm arose, as if Iphigenia, in person, had told us her terrors."