In the evening the house was packed,[{93}] every seat was occupied, and the audience warmly applauded the opening numbers of the opera. In due course Madame Alboni appeared, and at the point at which she was about to address her tutor, a few of the conspirators began to make a disturbance, not waiting for the signal.
Without showing any concern, Madame Alboni walked down to the footlights, and holding up the whistle, which was hung to her neck by a ribbon, she exclaimed: "Gentlemen, are you not a little before your time? I thought we were not to commence whistling until after I had sung the air."
For a moment a deathlike stillness prevailed. Then, suddenly, the house broke into thunders of applause, which was led by the conspirators themselves.
Alboni visited the United States in 1852, just after the visit of Jenny Lind, and received what was considered a cordial welcome. Nevertheless she is said to have[{94}] expressed some disappointment. In 1853 she married the Count of Pepoli, and soon after retired. She did not again sing in public, except in 1871, when she sang the contralto part in Rossini's Mass, a part which the composer had desired, before his death, that she would take when it was produced.
In social life the Countess of Pepoli was as much the idol of her friends as she had previously been of the public. In 1877 she married a second time, taking Major Zieger for her husband. Her death took place at the Ville d'Avray, Paris, in 1894.
For several years the favorite tenor on the French stage was Gustave Hyppolite Roger, a man of amiable and benevolent disposition, who was educated for the legal profession. He was born in 1815, at La Chapelle St. Denis, Paris, and entered the Conservatoire in 1836, carrying off, the following year, the first prizes for singing and comic opera. His[{95}] début was made in February, 1838, and he remained at the Opera Comique for ten years, after which he went to the Académie, and created a great sensation with Madame Viardot, in "Le Prophète." His acting was good both in tragic and comic parts, and he created many new rôles.
In 1859 he met with an unfortunate accident, and lost his right arm by the bursting of a gun, and this put an end to his operatic career in Paris. He continued, however, to sing in provincial towns and in Germany, until 1861, when he reappeared at the Opera Comique. But it was evident that the time for his retirement had come, and he took pupils, becoming a professor of singing at the Conservatoire in 1868, and holding the position until his death in 1879.
The mantle of Braham, the greatest English tenor of his day, descended to John Sims Reeves, the son of a musician, who was born at Shooter's Hill, Kent, in 1822.[{96}] Reeves, we are told, received the traditions of Braham, and refined them.
He obtained his early musical instruction from his father, and at fourteen held the position of organist at North Gray Church. Upon gaining his mature voice he determined to be a singer, and at first sang baritone and second tenor parts, making his début in opera, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, as Count Rudolpho in "La Sonnambula." Before long his voice developed into a tenor of an exceptionally beautiful quality, and, in 1847, when he appeared at Drury Lane, he at once took a position as a singer of the first rank. His acting, too, was natural and easy, manly, and to the purpose, exhibiting both passion and power without exaggeration.
His greatest triumph, however, was achieved in oratorio, and his performance of "The Enemy Said," in "Israel in Egypt," at the Crystal Palace, in 1857, was of such a nature as to electrify his hearers.[{97}]