“Her cold was not affected, for her voice, at first, was not quite clear! but she acquitted herself charmingly. And, little as she called this minuet, it contained difficulties which I firmly believe no other singer in the world could have executed.
“But her great talents, and our great astonishment, were reserved for her second song, which was taken from Metastasio’s opera of Didone, set by Colla, ‘Non hai ragione, ingrato!’
“As this was an aria parlante, she first, in a voice softly melodious, read us the words, that we might comprehend what she had to express.
“It is nobly set; nobly! ‘Bravo, il Signor Maestro!’ cried my father, two or three times. She began with a fulness and power of voice that amazed us beyond all our possible expectations. She then lowered it to the most expressive softness—in short, my dear Mr. Crisp, she was sublime! I can use no other word without degrading her.
“This, and a second great song from the same opera, Son Regina, and Son Amante, she sang in a style to which my ears have hitherto been strangers. She unites, to her surprising and incomparable powers of execution, and luxuriant facility and compass of voice, an expression still more delicate—and, I had almost said, equally feeling with that of my darling Millico, who first opened my sensations to the melting and boundless delights of vocal melody.[43] In fact, in Millico, it was his own sensibility that excited that of his hearers; it was so genuine, so touching! It seemed never to want any spur from admiration, but always to owe its excellence to its own resistless pathos.
“Yet with all its vast compass, and these stupendous sonorous sounds, the voice of Agujari has a mellowness, a sweetness, that are quite vanquishing. One can hardly help falling at her feet while one listens! Her shake, too, is no plump, so true, act open! and, to display her various abilities to my father, she sang in twenty styles—if twenty there may be; for nothing is beyond her reach. In songs of execution, her divisions were so rapid, and so brilliant, they almost made one dizzy from breathless admiration: her cantabiles were so fine, so rich, so moving, that we could hardly keep the tears from our eyes. Then she gave us some accompanied recitative, with a nobleness of accent, that made every one of us stand erect out of respect! Then, how fascinately she condescended to indulge us with a rondeau! though she holds that simplicity of melody beneath her; and therefore rose from it to chant some church music, of the Pope’s Chapel, in a style so nobly simple, so grandly unadorned, that it penetrated to the inmost sense. She is just what she will: she has the highest taste, with an expression the most pathetic; and she executes difficulties the most wild, the most varied, the most incredible, with just as much ease and facility as I can say—my dear Mr. Crisp!
“Now don’t you die to come and hear her? I hope you do. O, she is indescribable!
“Assure yourself my father joins in all this, though perhaps, if he had time to write for himself, he might do it more Lady Grace like, ‘soberly.’ I hope she will fill up at least half a volume of his history. I wish he would call her The Heroine of Music!
“We could not help regretting that her engagement was at the Pantheon, as her evidently fine ideas of acting are thrown away at a mere concert.
“At this, she made faces of such scorn and derision against the managers, for not putting her upon the stage, that they altered her handsome countenance almost to ugliness; and, snatching up a music book, and opening it, and holding it full broad in her hands, she dropt a formal courtesy, to take herself off at the Pantheon, and said; ‘Oui! j’y suis là comme une statue! comme une petite ecolière!’ And afterwards she contemptuously added: ‘Mais, on n’aime guere ici que les rondeaux!—Moi—j’abhorre ces miseres là!’