In 1824 Mme. Catalani again filled an engagement in England, making her reappearance in Mayer's comic pasticcio, "Il Fanatico per la Mu-sica," the airs of which had been expressly selected for the display of her vocal tours de force. Crowded audiences again welcomed her whom absence had made an idol dearer than ever, and her transcendent power as a singer seemed to have rise even beyond the old pitch in her electrical bravura style of execution. Yet some critics thought they detected tokens of the destroying hand of time. One critic spoke of the "fragrance" of her tone as having evaporated. Another compared her voice to a pianoforte the hammers of which had grown hard by use. In her appearance she had become even more beautiful than ever, with some slight accession of embonpoint, and was conceded to be the handsomest woman in Europe. For a while her popularity was unbounded among all classes, and probably no singer that ever lived rode on a higher wave of public adoration. But the critics began to be very much dissatisfied with the vicious uses to which she put her magnificent voice. In Paris the wags had called her l'instrument Catalani. In London they said her style had become a caricature of its former grandeur, so exaggerated and affected had it grown.
"When she begins one of the interminable roulades up the scale," says a writer in "Knight's Quarterly Magazine," "she gradually raises her body, which she had before stooped to almost a level with the ground, until, having won her way with a quivering lip and chattering chin to the very topmost note, she tosses back her head and all its nodding feathers with an air of triumph; then suddenly falls to a note two octaves and a half lower with incredible aplomb, and smiles like a victorious Amazon over a conquered enemy." A throng of flatterers joined in encouraging her in all her defects. "No sooner does Catalani quit the orchestra," says the same writer, "than she is beset by a host of foreign sycophants, who load her with exaggerated praise. I was present at a scene of this kind in the refreshment-room at Bath, and heard reiterated on all sides, 'Ah! madame, la dernière fois toujours la meilleure!' Thus is poor Mme. Catalani led to strive to excel herself every time she sings, until she exposes herself to the ridicule most probably of those very flatterers; for I have heard that on the Continent she is mimicked by a man dressed in female attire, who represents, by extravagant terms and gestures, Mme. Catalani surpassing herself." Occasionally, however, she showed that her genius had not forsaken her. Her singing of Luther's Hymn is thus described by an appreciative listener: "She admits in this grandly simple composition no ornament whatever but a pure shake at the conclusion. The majesty of her sustained tones, so rich, so ample as not only to fill but overflow the cathedral where I heard her, the solemnity of her manner, and the St. Cecilia-like expression of her raised eyes and rapt countenance, produced a thrilling effect through the united medium of sight and hearing. Whoever has heard Catalani sing this, accompanied by Schmidt on the trumpet, has heard the utmost that music can do. Then in the succeeding chorus, when the same awful words, 'The trumpet sounds; the graves restore the dead which they contained before,' are repeated by the whole choral strength, her voice, piercing through the clang of instruments and the burst of other voices, is heard as distinctly as if it were alone! During the encore I found my way to the top of a tower on the outside of the cathedral, and could still distinguish her wonderful voice."
A charming incident is told of Mme. Catalani while in Brighton. Captain Montague, cruising off that port, invited her and some other ladies to a fête on his ship, and the ladies were escorted on board by the Captain in a boat manned by twenty men. The prima donna suddenly burst forth with her pet song, "Rule Britannia," singing with electrical fire and the full power of her magnificent voice. The tars dropped their oars, and tears rolled down their weatherbeaten cheeks, while the Captain said: "You see, madame, the effect this favorite air has on these brave men when sung by the finest voice in the world. I have been in many victorious battles, but never felt an excitement equal to this."
Mme. Catalani retired from the stage in 1831. Young and brilliant rivals, such as Pasta and Son-tag, were rising to contest her sovereignty, and for several years the critics had been dropping pretty plain hints that it would be the most judicious and dignified course. She settled on a magnificent estate near Lake Como, where she lived with her two eldest children—a son and daughter—the younger son being absent on military duty in the French army. This latter afterward became an equerry to Napoleon III., and the other children occupied positions of rank and honor. Mme. Catalani founded a school of gratuitous instruction for young girls near her beautiful villa, and exacted that all who graduated from this school should adopt her own name. One, Signora Masilli-Catalani, became quite an eminent singer. Mrs. Trollope tells us something of Catalani's latter days as she visited her in Italy: "Nothing could be more amiable than the reception she gave us." She expressed a great admiration and love for the English. Her beauty was little injured. "Her eyes and teeth are still magnificent," says Mrs. Trollope, "and I am told that, when seen in evening full dress by candlelight, no stranger can see her for the first time without inquiring who that charming-looking woman is." Mrs. Trollope hinted to Mlle, de Valle-brèque that she would like to hear her mother sing; and in a moment Mme. Catalani was at the piano, smiling at the whispered request from her daughter. "I know not what it was she sang, but scarcely had she permitted her voice to swell into one of those bravura passages, of which her execution was so very peculiar and so perfectly unequaled, than I felt as if some magic process was being performed upon me, which took me back again to something—I know not what to call it—which I had neither heard nor felt for nearly twenty years. Involuntarily, unconsciously, my eyes filled with tears, and I felt as much embarrassed as a young lady of fifteen might be who suddenly found herself in the act of betraying emotions which she was far indeed from wishing to display." William Gardiner visited Mme. Catalani in 1846. "I was surprised at the vigor of Mme. Catalani," he says, "and how little she was altered since I saw her at Derby in 1828. I paid her a compliment upon her good looks. 'Ah!' said she, 'I am growing old and ugly.' I would not allow it. 'Why, man,' she said, 'I'm sixty-six!' She has lost none of that commanding expression which gave her such dignity on the stage. She is without a wrinkle, and appears to be no more than forty. Her breadth of chest is still remarkable; it was this which endowed her with the finest voice that ever sang. Her speaking voice and dramatic air are still charming, and not in the least impaired."
About the year 1848 Catalani and her family left Italy for fear of the cholera, which was then raging, and sought refuge in Paris. While residing there she heard Jenny Lind. One morning, a few days after, the servant announced a strange visitor, who would not give her name. On being ushered in, the timid stranger, who showed a plain but pleasant face, knelt at her feet and said falteringly, "I am Jenny Lind, madame—I am come to ask your blessing." A few days afterward Catalani was stricken with the cholera, which she so much dreaded, and died on June 12th, at the age of sixty-nine.
It is not a marvel that the public was captivated with Catalani. She had every splendid gift that Nature could lavish—surpassing physical beauty, a matchless voice, energy of spirit, sweetness of temper, and warm affections. Her whole private life was marked by the utmost purity and propriety, and she was the soul of generosity and unselfishness. The many business troubles in which she was involved were caused by her husband's rapacity and narrowness of judgment, and not by her own disposition to take advantage of the necessities of her managers—a charge her enemies at one time brought against her.
Her unrivaled endowments (for that taken all in all they were unrivaled is now pretty well acknowledged) ought to have raised her much higher in rank as an artist. Her education even as a singer was extremely superficial, and she became an object of universal admiration without ever knowing anything about music. As she advanced in her career, her whole ambition seemed to be narrowed down to surprising the world by displays of vocal power. As long as these displays would dazzle and astonish, it made little difference how absurd and unmeaning they were. Had she assiduously cultivated the dramatic part of her profession, such were the powers of her voice, her sense of the beautiful, her histrionic passion and energy, her charms of person, that she might have been the greatest lyric artist that ever lived. Many of the songs she selected as vehicles of display were unsuitable to a female voice. For instance, she would take the martial song for a bass voice, "Non piu Andrai," in "Figaro," and overpower by the force and volume of her organ all the brass instruments of the orchestra. A craving for such sort of admiration from unthinking crowds turned her aside from the true path of her art, where she might have reached the top peak of greatness, and has handed down her memory a shining beacon rather than as a model to her successors.
GIUDITTA PASTA.
Greatness of Genius overcoming Disqualification.—The Characteristic Lesson of Pasta's Life.—Her First Appearance and Failure.—Pasta returns to Italy and devotes herself to Study.—Her First Great Successes in 1819.—Characteristics of her Voice and Singing.—Chorley's Review of the Impressions made on him by Pasta.—She makes her Triumphal Début in Paris.—Talma on Pasta's Acting.—Her Performances of "Giulietta" and "Tancredi."—Medea, Pasta's Grandest Impersonation, is given to the World.—Description of the Performance.—Enthusiasm of the Critics and the Public.—Introduction of Pasta to the English Public in Rossini's "Otello."—The Impression made in England.—Recognized as the Greatest Dramatic Prima Donna in the World.—Glances at the Salient Facts of her English Career.—The Performance of "Il Crociato in Egitto."—She plays the Male Rôle in "Otello."—Rivalry with Malibran and Sontag.—The Founder of a New School of Singing.—Pasta creates the Leading Rôles in Bellini's "Sonnambula" and "Norma" and Donizetti's "Anna Bolena."—Decadence and Retirement.