It will be seen that we recognize a moral basis as the source of Jenny Lind’s fascination; and if we were obliged to define this in a single word, perhaps the lexicon would furnish none so expressive as the homely one—truth. But we use it as significant of far more than the absence of falsehood; we mean by it candor, trust, spontaneity, directness. We believe that Jenny Lind inspires sympathy in spite of her petite figure, not altogether because she warbles enchantingly, and has amiable manners, but also on account of the faith she at once excites. We perceive that love of approbation is not her ruling impulse, although her profession might excuse it; but that she has an ideal of her own, an artistic conscience, a love of art, a musical ministry to satisfy and accomplish, and that these considerations induce a nobler ambition than co-exists with mere vanity. It is said that the remarkable novel of Consuelo, by George Sand, is founded on the character and history of Jenny Lind. Whether this be so or not, the theory of the tale, the guileless devotion to art as such, which stamps the heroine with such exalted grace, finds a parallel in this famed vocalist of the North; the same singleness of purpose and intact clearness of soul, the same firm will and gentle heart are evident. Much, too, of her success is attributable to the philosophy of Consuelo’s maestro—that to reach the highest excellence in Art, the affections as well as the mind must be yielded at her shrine. There is a subtle and deep relation between feeling and expression, and the biographies of those who have achieved renown in the latter, under any of its artistic forms, indicate that it has embodied that within them that found no adequate response in actual life. The highest efforts of the poet and musician, are confessedly the result of baffled or overflowing emotion; disguised, perhaps, as to the form, but clearly evident in the tone of their productions. Mozart and Raphael, Bryant and Paganini, have illustrated this most emphatically. Jenny Lind seems to have kept her better feelings alive by the habitual exercise of benevolence, and a diffusive friendliness, while her concentrated and earnest activity finds utterance in her art. Hence the sway she has gained over countless hearts, each absorbed in its own dream or shadowed by its own regrets, that glow again in the kindling atmosphere of song, which gushes from a soul over which no overmastering passion has yet cast a gloom, and whose transparent waters no agitation of conflicting desires has ever made turbid and restless. Jenny Lind has been a priestess at the shrine of Art, and therefore interprets its oracles “as one having authority.”
In this country the idea of fashion and the mere relish of amusement, have blended so exclusively with the support of the Opera, that we seldom realize its artistic relations and influence. The taste for the Italian Opera seems to have extended in the ratio of civilization; and although it is, after all, an exotic among the Anglo-Saxons—a pleasure born in the “sweet South,” and in its very richness of combination, suggestive of the impassioned feeling and habitual luxury of those climes—yet, on the other hand, it is typical of the complex life, wants and tendencies of modern society. The old English tragic drama, robust, fierce-hearted and unadorned, has faded before it; the theatre, as a reunion of wits, and an arena for marvelous histrionic effects, as a subject of elegant criticism, and a nucleus for universal sympathy, may be said not to exist; while the Opera has become the scene of display, elegance, and pleasure on the one hand, and of the highest triumphs on the other. The sentiment of the age has written itself in music—its wide intelligence, its keen analysis, its revolutionary spirit, its restlessness, and its humanity, may be traced in the rich and brilliant combinations of Rossini, in the grand symphonies of Beethoven, in the pleading tenderness of Bellini, and in the mingled war-notes and sentiment of Verdi. The demand for undisguised and free expression, characteristic of the times, finds also its requisite scope in the lyrical drama. Recitation is too tame, pantomime too silent, scenic art too illusive, costume too familiar, music too unpicturesque; but all these combined are, at once, as romantic, exciting, impressive, and melo-dramatic as the varied aptitudes, the exacting taste, and the broad, experimental genius of the age. The gifts of nature, the resources of art, the gratification of the senses, the exigencies of fashion and taste, and the wants of the heart and imagination find in the Opera a most convenient luxury. The lyrical drama has thus gradually usurped the place of tournament and theatre; it is a social as well as an artistic exponent of the day; and those who have best illustrated it are justly regarded as public benefactors. Few, however, have ministered in this temple, with the artless grace, the pure enthusiasm, the vestal glory of Jenny Lind. The daughters of the South, ardent and susceptible, but capricious and extravagant, heretofore won its chief honors; their triumphs have been great but spasmodic, gained by impulse rather than nature, by glorious gifts of person rather than rare graces of soul. Jenny Lind, with her fair hair and blue eyes, her unqueenly form, and child-like simplicity, has achieved almost unparalleled success, by means quite diverse. Her one natural gift is a voice of singular depth, compass, flexibility and tone. This has been, if we may be allowed the expression, mesmerized by a soul, earnest, pure and sincere; and thus, with the clear perception and dauntless will of the North has she interpreted the familiar musical dramas in a new, vivid, and original manner. One would imagine she had come with one bound from tending her flock on the hill-side, to warble behind the foot-lights; for so directly from the heart of nature springs her melody, and so beyond the reach of art is the simple grace of her air and manners, that we associate her with the Opera only through the consummate skill—the result of scientific training—manifested in her vocalism. The term warbling is thus adapted peculiarly to express the character of her style; its ease, fluency, spontaneous gush, and the total absence of every thing meretricious and exaggerated in the action and bearing that accompanies it. It is like the song of a bird, only more human. Nature in her seems to have taken Art to her bosom, and assimilated it, through love, with herself, until the identity of each is lost in the other.
The union of such musical science—such thoroughly disciplined art with such artlessness and simplicity, is, perhaps, the crowning mystery of her genius. To know and to love are the conditions of triumph in all the exalted spheres of human labor; and in the musical drama, they have never been so admirably united. Her command of expression seems not so much the result of study as of inspiration; and there is about her a certain gentle elevation which stamps her to every eye, as one who is consecrated to a high service. Her ingenuous countenance, always enlivened by an active intelligence, might convey, at first, chiefly the idea of good-nature and cleverness in the English sense; but her carriage, voice, movements, and expression in the more affecting moments of a drama, give sympathetic assurance of what we must be excused for calling—a crystal soul. In all her characters she transports us, at once, away from the commonplace and the artificial, if not always into the domain of lofty idealism, into that more human and blissful domain of primal nature; and unhappy is the being who finds not the unconscious delight of childhood, or the dream of love momently renewed in that serene and unclouded air.
In accordance with this view of Jenny Lind’s characteristics, the enthusiasm she excited in England, is alluded to by the leading critics, as singularly honest. No musical artist, indeed, was ever so fitted to win Anglo-Saxon sympathies. She has the morale of the North; and does not awaken the prejudice so common in Great Britain, and so truly described in Corinne, against the passionate temperament and tendency to extravagance that mark the children of the South. No candidate for public favor was ever so devoid of the ordinary means of attaining it. There is something absurd in making such a creature the mere nucleus of fashionable vanity, or the object of that namby-pamby criticism that busies itself with details of personal appearance and French terms of compliment. Jenny Lind is not beautiful; she does not take her audiences by storm; she exercises no intoxicating physical magnetism over their sensitive natures. She is not classic either in form or feature, or manner, or style of singing. Her loveliness as a woman, her power as an artist, her grace as a character, lies in expression; and that expression owes its variety and its enchantment to unaffected truth to nature, sentiment and the principles of art.
And now that Jenny Lind is hourly expected among us, let a word be ventured as to what self-respect and the love of art make appropriate for her reception. Let not so charitable a soul be mortified by a tasteless hospitality; let not this genuine artist be seized upon by the remorseless purveyors of meretricious Fashion; and, above all, let not her gentle and candid nature be subjected to the vulgarism of the lionizing mania! As a priestess of Art, in its highest and sweetest form, as a fair ministrant to the spirit of Beauty, as a true musical interpreter of humanity—let the people welcome her with sincere and grateful recognition. This is the most acceptable tribute an unperverted soul can receive or bestow. It is that intelligent sympathy due from a free and educated society, and cheering to a discriminating recipient. Far from Nature’s minstrel be the critical affectation of the professed amateur, and the empty adulation of the coxcomb. Let her pure and exquisite vocalism—the result of such discipline, faith, and rare gifts of heaven, find a response in the American heart unprofaned by absurd excitement, and truly indicative of a genuine and cordial appreciation of the beautiful in art, and the excellent in character.
THE POET’S PRAYER.
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BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.
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