CHAPTER V.
| "Our Barytone I almost had forgot; |
| * * * * * * |
| In lover's parts, his passion more to breathe, |
| Having no heart to show, he shows his teeth."—Byron. |
HE Barytone of the opera is probably the most inoffensive individual in the world. This is his peculiarity. Even his fierceness on the stage is done with an effort; and when in the course of a piece he is unfortunately called on to massacre somebody, we always fancy that he does it with the most unfeigned reluctance, and for aught we know, with silent tears. He is generally of a bashful, retiring disposition, and pretty nearly always awkward. This perhaps arises from the anomalous position he occupies in operatical society. He cannot be on good terms with the basso,—they have too much similarity in their voices for that; he is on no more friendly relations with the tenor for the same reason. Besides never daring to aspire to the familiarity with the prima donna which that worthy enjoys, he suffers under the affliction of conscious diffidence in their presence.
The barytone must as surely be the king as the basso must be the tyrant; indeed we have often thought of the startling effect which would be produced by an opera in which this law of nature was reversed. To hear the lover growling his tender feelings in a gutteral E flat, and moaning his hard lot in a series of double D.'s; to listen to the remorseless tyrant ordering his myrmidons to "away with him to the deepest dungeon 'neath the castle moat," in the most soothing and mellifluous of tenor head notes, would produce such a revulsion in operatic taste, as surely to create a deep sensation, if nothing more.
CHAPTER VI.
| "There never was a man so notoriously abused. |
| Twelfth Night. |
| "But whispering words can poison truth." |
| Coleridge. |