Jenny’s first coming upon the stage at the Concert has been described by every critic. Several of them have pronounced it done rather awkwardly. It seemed to me, however, that the language of curtesies was never before so varied—never before so eloquently effective. She expressed more than the three degrees of humility—profound, profounder profoundest—more than the three degrees of simplicity—simple, simpler, simplest. In the impression she produced, there was conviction of the superlative of both, and something to spare. Who, of the spectators that remembered Steffanoni’s superb indifference to the public—(expressed by curtesies just as low when making her first appearance to sing the very solo that Jenny was about to sing)—did not recognize, at Castle Garden, that night, the eloquent inspiration there might be, if not the excessive art, in a curtsey on the stage? I may as well record, for the satisfaction of the great Good-as-you—(the “Casta Diva” of our country)—that Jenny’s reverence to this our divinity, the other night, was not practised before Kings and Courts. I was particularly struck, in Germany, with the reluctant civility expressed by her curtesies to the box of the Sovereign Grand Duke, and to the audience of nobles and gamblers. In England, when the Queen was present, it seemed to me that Jenny wished to convey, in her manner of acknowledging the applause for her performance of La Somnambula, that her profession was distasteful to her. In both these instances, there was certainly great reserve in her “making of her manners”—in this country there has, as certainly, been none.
The opening solo of “Casta Diva” was well selected to show the quality of Jenny Lind’s voice, though the dramatic effect of this passage of Bellini’s opera could not be given by a voice that had formed itself upon her life and character. Pure invocation to the Moon, the Norman Deity, as the two first stanzas are, the latter half of the solo is a passionate prayer of the erring Priestess to her unlawful love; and, to be sung truly, must be sung passionately, and with the cadences of love and sin. On Jenny’s lips, the devout purity and imploring worship and contrition, proper to the stanzas in which the Deity is addressed, are continued throughout; and the Roman, who has both desecrated and been faithless to her, is besought to return and sin again, with accents of sublimely unconscious innocence. To those who listened without thought of the words, it was a delicious melody, and the voice of an angel—for, in its pathetic and half mournful sweetness, that passage, on such a voice, goes straight to the least expectant and least wakeful fountain of tears—but it was Jenny Lind, and not Norma, and she should have the air set to new words or to an affecting and elevated passage of Scripture.
And it strikes me, by the way, as a little wonderful—Jenny Lind being what she is, and the religious world being so numerous—that the inspired Swede, in giving up the stage, has not gone over to sacred music altogether. It would have been worthy of her, as well as abundantly in her power, to have created a Sacred Musical Drama—or, at least, so much of one, as the singing the songs of Scripture, in costume and character. Had the divine music of Casta Diva, the other night, for instance, been the Lamentation of the Daughter of Jeptha, and had a background of religious reverence given to the singer its strong relief, while the six thousand listeners were gazing with moist eyes upon her, how immeasurably would not the effect of that mere Operatic music have been heightened! With a voice and skill capable of almost miraculous personation, and with a character of her own which gives her the sacredness of an angel, she might truly “carry the world away,” were the music but equal to that of the popular operas. Is it not possible to originate this in our country? With hundreds of thousands of religious people ready to form new audiences, when she has sung out her worldly music, will not the pure-hearted, humble, simple, saint-like and gifted Jenny commence a new career of Sacred Music, on this side the water? Some one told me, once, that he had heard her sing, in a private room, that beautiful song, “I know that my Redeemer liveth!” with feeling and expression such as he had never before thought possible. What a field for a composer is the Bible! For how many of its personages—Mary, Hagar, Miriam, Ruth—might single songs be written, that, sung in the costume in which they are usually painted, and with such action as the meaning required, would give boundless pleasure to the religious! The class is well worth composing for, and they are well worthy of the service of a sequestrated choir of the world’s best singers—of whom Jenny Lind may most triumphantly be the first.
That Jenny Lind sings like a woman with no weaknesses—that there is plenty of soul in her singing, but no flesh and blood—that her voice expresses more tender pity than tender passion, and more guidance in the right way than sympathy with liability to the wrong—are reasons, I think, why she should compare unfavorably with the impassioned sinners of the opera, in opera scenes and characters. Grisi and Steffanoni give better and more correct representations of “Norma,” both musical and dramatic, than she—and naturally enough. It is wonderful how differently the same music may be correctly sung; and how the quality of the voice—which is inevitably an expression of the natural character and habits of mind—makes its meaning! It is one of the most interesting events to have seen Jenny Lind at all—but, her character and her angelic acts apart, a woman “as is a woman” may better sing much of the music she takes from operas.
Of the “Flute Song” and the “Echo Song” the papers have said enough, and I will save what else I have to say of the great-souled maiden, till I get back to my quarters in the city and have heard her again.
Pardon the gravity of my letter, dear Madam, and believe me
Your humble servant.
LETTER XII.
TO THE LADY-SUBSCRIBER IN THE COUNTRY.
New York Sept. 1850.