Answer: Alas! are you ignorant of the fact that the artist is a piece of merchandise, which the impresario has purchased, and which he sets off to the best advantage according to his own taste and views? You might as well upbraid certain pseudo-gold-mines for declaring dividends which they will never pay, as to render the artist responsible for the puffs of his managers. A poor old negress becomes, in the hands of the Jupiter of the Museum, the nurse of Washington; after that, can you marvel at the magniloquent titles coupled with my name?
The artist is like the stock which is to be quoted at the board and thrown upon the market. The impresario and his agents, the broker and his clique, cry out that it is "excellent, superb, unparalleled,—the shares are being carried off as by magic,—there remain but very few reserved seats." (The house will perhaps be full of dead-heads, and the broker may be meditating a timely failure.) Nevertheless, the public rushes in, and the money follows a similar course. If the stock be really good, the founders of the enterprise become millionnaires. If the artist has talent, the impresario occasionally makes his (the impresario's) fortune. In case both stock and artist prove bad, they fall below par and vanish after having made (quite innocently) a certain number of victims. Now, in all sincerity, of the two humbugs, do you not prefer that of the impresario? At all events, it is less expensive.
I heard Brignoli yesterday evening in "Martha." The favorite tenor has still his charming voice, and has retained, despite the progress of an embonpoint that gives him some uneasiness, the aristocratic elegance which, added to his fine hair and "beautiful throat," has made him so successful with the fair sex. Brignoli, notwithstanding the defects his detractors love to heap upon him, is an artist I sincerely admire. The reverse of vocalists, who, I am sorry to say, are for the most part vulgar ignoramuses, he is a thorough musician, and perfectly qualified to judge a musical work. His enemies would be surprised to learn that he knows by heart Hummel's Concerto in A minor. He learned it as a child when he contemplated becoming a pianist, and still plays it charmingly. Brignoli knows how to sing, and, were it not for the excessive fear that paralyzes all his faculties before an audience, he would rank among the best singers of the day.
I met Brignoli for the first time at Paris in 1849. He was then very young, and had just made his début at the Théâtre Italien, in "L' Elisire d' Amore," under the sentimental patronage of Mme. R., wife of the celebrated barytone. In those days Brignoli was very thin, very awkward, and his timidity was rendered more apparent by the proximity of his protectress. Mme. R. was an Italian of commanding stature, impassioned and jealous. She sang badly, although possessed of a fine voice, which she was less skilful in showing to advantage than in displaying the luxuriant splendor of her raven hair. The public, initiated into the secret of the green-room, used to be intensely amused at the piteous attitudes of Nemorino Brignoli, contrasting, as they did, with the ardent pantomime of Adina R., who looked by his side like a wounded lioness. Poor woman! What has been your fate? The glossy tresses of which you were so proud in your scenes of insanity, those tresses that brought down the house when your talent might have failed to do so, are now frosted with the snow of years. Your husband has forsaken you. After a long career of success, he has buried his fame under the orange-groves of the Alhambra. There he directs, according to his own statement, (but I can scarce credit it,) the phantom of a Conservatory for singing. I am convinced he has too much taste to break in upon the poetical silence of the old Moorish palace with portamenti, trills, and scales, and I flatter myself that the plaintive song of the nightingales of the Generalife and the soft murmur of the Fountain of the Lions are the only concerts that echo gives to the breeze that gently sighs at night from the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Alas! poor woman, your locks are silvered, and Brignoli—has grown fat! "Sic transit gloria mundi!"
DIPLOMACY OF THE REVOLUTION.
When a European speaks about the American Revolution, he speaks of it as the work of Washington and Franklin. These two names embody for his mind all the phases of the contest, and explain its result. The military genius of Washington, going hand in hand with the civil genius of Franklin, fills the foreground of his picture. He has heard of other names, and may remember some of them; but these are the only ones which have taken their place in his memory at the side of the great names of European history.
In part this is owing to the importance which all Europeans attach to the French alliance as one of the chief causes of our success. For then, as now, France held a place among the great powers of the world which gave importance to all her movements. With direct access to two of the principal theatres of European strife and easy access to the third, she never raised her arm without drawing immediate attention. If less powerful than England on the ocean, she was more powerful there than any other nation; and even England's superiority was often, and sometimes successfully, contested. The adoption by such a power of the cause of a people so obscure as the people of the "Thirteen Colonies" then were was, in the opinion of European statesmen, decisive of its success. The fact of our actual poverty was known to all; few, if any, knew that we possessed exhaustless sources of wealth. Our weakness was on the surface, palpable, manifest, forcing itself upon attention; our strength lay out of sight, in rich veins which none but eyes familiar with their secret windings could trace. Thus the French alliance, as the European interpreted it, was the alliance of wealth with poverty, of strength with weakness,—a magnanimous recognition of efforts which without that recognition would have been vain. What, then, must have been the persuasive powers, the commanding genius, of the man who procured that recognition!