So much the more is Mme. Calvé's achievement to be wondered at. A very stroke of genius is the dropping of Marguerite's prayer-book in the excitement of her first meeting with Faust, so symbolical is it of his effect on her life. This is more than realism—it is poetry. Again, in the spinning-song, she creates an exquisite effect by disentangling a knot in the thread on her wheel and at the same time slowing up with her song and diminishing it until the wheel turns again and she resumes the tempo.
When asked how she ever thinks of these innovations, especially the one of inserting ecstatic little laughs in the Jewel-song, she smiled prettily and shrugged her shoulders.
"It just comes to me in the acting—I don't know how. But I never change the music."
She wished it impressed that, whatever her innovations, she maintains a reverence for all of the composer's work.
There is something about Mme. Calvé that makes you feel in her presence the subtle influence of a large heart and a grand soul. In her own land she is famed not only for her singing, but also for her great generosity.
"Carmen"