The first piece announced for the evening’s entertainment was Casta Diva. Of course it was. Was there ever an amateur soirée that it was not the first piece?
At the appointed time, a young lady of sixteen summers, with very bare neck and arms, hair done up in curls and furbelows by a French coiffeur, hands in white kid gloves, a variety of her mother’s jewels on head, hands and breast, a little pug of a nose beneath two very innocent-looking eyes, and, as was said, a splendid soprano voice, stood up by the professor’s piano to personate the Druid priestess.
“Ca-ha-ha-hasta Dee-e-evar,” she began, emphasizing each division of the words, and screaming them out as if she really thought she could make the Casta Diva—the moon—hear her vociferous appeal, and paying no regard to the fact that the chaste goddess was, at that particular time, enlightening the other side of the globe.
The whole of the andante was in this scream, which threw the audience into ecstasies. Then she began, “Ah bello, a me ritorna.” How she dashed through it—leaping over bars with a racer’s agility, plunging through barriers and ditches of sound—up hill and down hill—over ledger lines and under them—helter skelter—chromatics and ecstatics—flats and sharps—screech and scream—over and over—with face hideously distorted, the veins and muscles of her neck swelled to bursting, while Millefiori’s hands kept thundering at the piano and urging her on to louder labors.
Shade of Bellini! was there not one of your chords to stop the throat uttering these musical blasphemies?
At last she ended, amid a tumult of applause, for which she gave one of Monsieur Petitpas’ most graceful courtesies, bowing so as to show Monsieur Chevelure’s handiwork upon her head-works in the most effective manner.
She was followed by a dozen or more of soprani, mezzo-soprani, contralti, baritoni and bassi, of whose performances I have but a dim, obscure recollection as of so many contests for the palm of superior noise; all of them being exhibited in the tremendous screaming and shouting pieces of the modern Italians.
This was my last amateur soirée—and let me whisper a warning word to the world that remains behind me—“Beware of amateur soirées!”
But my musical sufferings did not end here. The noises of the streets are agony to me. The oyster and the apple-men; the strawberry and the shad-women—what are they to me but so many liberated fiends, placed on earth to persecute the owners of ears! And as for the news-boys—but I will not recapitulate my sufferings from them.
I have for some time been engaged in projects for the correction of these street evils. I leave in my executor’s hands the manuscript of the “Shad-woman’s Complete Musical Instructor,” “The Oysterman’s Apollo,” and “The News-Boys’ Guide to Parnassus.” In these I have arranged to the most beautiful melodies, the common cries of “Buy any Shad!” “Ho, fresh Oysters!” “Herald, Tribune, Ledgee, Ledgee,” “Evening Bulletin,” and the other favorite appeals of these as yet unappeased street demons. A variety of melodies is given to each phrase, and beautiful variations are arranged in the “Guide to Parnassus,” for extras, double-sheets, etc., with a special and elaborate composition arranged expressly for the familiar words, “Another Revolution in France!”