Piccolomini.
Adelina Patti.
Gerster.
Lucca and Nilsson.
Sembrich.
Madame La Grange had a voice of wide compass, which enabled her to sing contralto rôles as well as soprano, but I have never heard her dramatic powers praised. As for Piccolomini, read of her where you will, you shall find that she was "charming." She was lovely to look upon, and her acting in soubrette parts was fascinating. Until Melba came Patti was for thirty years peerless as a mere vocalist. She belongs, as did Piccolomini and Sontag, to the comic genre; so did Sembrich and Gerster, the latter of whom never knew it. I well remember how indignant she became on one occasion, in her first American season, at a criticism which I wrote of her Amina in "La Sonnambula," a performance which remains among my loveliest and most fragrant recollections. I had made use of Catalani's remark concerning Sontag: "Son genre est petit, mais elle est unique dans son genre," and applied it to her style. She almost flew into a passion. "Mon genre est grand!" said she, over and over again, while Dr. Gardini, her husband, tried to pacify her. "Come to see my Marguerite next season." Now, Gounod's Marguerite does not quite belong to the heroic rôles, though we can all remember how Lucca thrilled us by her intensity of action as well as of song, and how Madame Nilsson sent the blood out of our cheeks, though she did stride through the opera like a combination of the grande dame and Ary Scheffer's spirituelle pictures; but such as it is, Madame Gerster achieved a success of interest only, and that because of her strivings for originality. Sembrich and Gerster, when they were first heard in New York, had as much execution as Melba or Nilsson; but their voices had less emotional power than that of the latter, and less beauty than that of the former—beauty of the kind that might be called classic, since it is in no way dependent on feeling.
Melba and Eames.
Calvé.
Dramatic singers.
Jean de Reszke.