Come! Benvenuto Cellini—venite!
Monday, February 1873.
Leighton's passion for music led him to encourage all that was best in instrumental as well as in vocal performance. The Monday Popular Concerts were started by Messrs. Chappell in 1859, the first being given on the 3rd January. From their commencement Leighton was a subscriber, and very rarely missed being present.
It was in the 'seventies that Leighton instituted those yearly feasts of music, which were among the real treats of the year.[54] His dear friend Joachim was to the end the pièce de résistance of these gatherings. Never did the Great Master seem so inspired as when he played in that studio. Leighton wrote to his sister, Mrs. Matthews, April 1871:—
Dearest Gussy,—You heard, no doubt, that I gave a party the other day, and that it went off well. To me perhaps the most striking thing of the evening was Joachim's playing of Bach's "Chacone" up in my gallery. I was at the other end of the room, and the effect from the distance of the dark figure in the uncertain light up there, and barely relieved from the gold background and dark recess, struck me as one of the most poetic and fascinating things that I remember. At the opposite end of the room in the apse was a blazing crimson rhododendron tree, which looked glorious where it reached up into the golden semi-dome. Madame Viardot sang the "Divinités du Styx," from the "Alcestis," quite magnificently, and then, later in the evening, a composition of her own in which I delight—a Spanish-Arab ditty, with a sort of intermittent mandoline scraping accompaniment. It is the complaint of some forsaken woman, and wanders and quavers in a doleful sort of way that calls up to me in a startling manner visions and memories of Cadiz and Cordova, and sunny distant lands that smell of jasmine. A little Miss Brandes, a pupil of Madame Schumann, played too. She is full of talent and promise, and has had an immense success. Mme. Joachim sang "Mignon" (Beethoven) excellently.
Sketch executed on the spot by Mr. Theodore Blake Wirgman of their Majesties the King and Queen attending a Popular Concert
in St. James's Hall, Lord Leighton being one of the Royal party. About 1893.[ToList]
Mrs. Watts Hughes writes the following notes relating to those years of the 'seventies:—
I remember the incident you refer to at Eton College. The Orfeo performance was given by the Eton boys, who had formed a society among themselves with the view of making acquaintance with the music of the great masters. I took the part of Orfeo, and a niece of Darwin's, Miss Wedgwood, who is now Lady Farrer, sang Euridice's part. I believe Lord Leighton sang in some of the quartettes and choruses. I often met Lord Leighton at Mrs. Sartoris' musical gatherings at her house in Park Place, St. James', when he would sing very heartily the tenor parts of the old madrigals, in which also Mrs. Douglas Freshfield, Miss Ritchie, and others took part with Mrs. Sartoris, who on some occasions would sing one of her great operatic Arias which brought her so much fame in her former years.