MEMOIRS OF DR. BURNEY, BY HIS DAUGHTER MAD. D’ARBLAY.
[Continued from [page 54].]
WE resume our specimens of these volumes with an extract from a letter, giving the authoress’s account of Agujari, who is, by the common consent of contemporary musicians, allowed to have possessed the most wonderful voice that any woman was ever gifted with, (reaching to B
in altissimo); and to have been the most talented and splendid singer of her day; but who, being excluded by lameness from the stage, and confined entirely to the church or the concert-room, is less remembered than many theatrical singers who were not possessed of half her merit.
“She came with the Signor Maestro Colla, very early, to tea.
“I cannot deign to mention our party,—but it was small and good:—though by no means bright enough to be enumerated in the same page with Agujari.
“She frightened us a little, at first, by complaining of the cold. How we looked at one another! Mr. Burney was called upon to begin; which he did with even more than his usual spirit; and then—without waiting for a petition—which nobody, not even my dear father, had yet gathered courage to make, Agujari, the Bastardella, arose, voluntarily arose, to sing!
“We all rose too! we seemed all ear. There was no occasion for any other part to our persons. Had a fan,—for I won’t again give you a pin,—fallen, I suppose we should have taken it for at least a thunder-clap. All was hushed and rapt attention.
“Signor Colla accompanied her. She began with what she called a little minuet of his composition.