his hand. "Why," he exclaimed, "cannot I find a soul, fit for such a body! I, whose capacity for love is so deep, so glowing, must be doomed to feel it burning out in smouldering ashes, for want of an object worthy of its energies and its powers. O Apollo! Great Apollo !-why wilt thou not deign to bless thy child—to animate this work of thy spirit, though of my hand? Why wilt not thou enshrine in those perfect proportions and charms, a spirit worthy of it, and of thee; worthy of the vast, burning, lofty aspirations, that fill this heart?"

As the sculptor finished this ardent prayer, to his utter surprise and consternation, he saw a rosy tinge steal along the marble. Blue veins crept over the white surface. Light broke out from the marble sockets. Brighter and stronger came the rosy tints, till the cheeks and lips were sparkling in living, glowing, breathing beauty. The white marble beneath, however, seemed scarcely to change its hue, though it was human, warm, living flesh. The prayer of the sculptor was heard.The spirit had entered the statue, and acquired at once a mortal life and an immortal soul.

But did the aspirations of the pair cease with their gratification? Never. Throughout eternity they can never cease. One morning, for the last time, they were seen to enter the work-room of the sculptor. From that hour they were seen

no more.

STUDIES ON CONTEMPORARY SINGERS.

ALTERED FROM THE FRENCH.

LOUIS LABLACHE.

LABLACHE! Here is one of those artistical superiorities before which the loftiest reputations bend down as if in the presence of royalty. Since the appearance of Lablache upon the musical stage, the singers who had previously made a name in basse-taille parts have been all eclipsed, and no one else has arisen to dispute with him the first place.

Lablache, like Rubini, is of an age at which the agitations of the life of an artist are still productive of pleasure and glory. He was born at Naples in 1794; his mother was Irish, and his father was a Frenchman, who had left Marseilles to escape the perils of the revolution. But another revolution, in 1799, surprised the father of Lablache in his new country, and caused his ruin. He died of grief. Joseph Napoleon granted his protection to the unfortunate family, and placed young Louis in the Conservatorio della Pietà de Turchini, now San-Sabastiano. Here the boy studied both instrumental and vocal music. One day, a contra-bassist was wanting in the orchestra of Santo-Onofrio; Marcello Perrino, Lablache's master, said to him, " You are perfectly acquainted with the violoncello; it would be easy for you to play the contra bass." Lablache had an aversion to this instrument; nevertheless, he had the gamut of it written out for him, and three days afterwards he executed his part with perfect accuracy. M. Castil-Blaze has truly said, that even if Lablache had not been endowed with a magnificent voice, he would not the less have shone among the virtuosi of the day; he would have played upon the violoncello like Bohrer, upon the flute like Tulou: from the organ to the jews-harp all instruments were at his command; he had only to choose.

When still quite young, Lablache felt a strong desire to tread the boards. Five times in succession did he desert the Conservatorio to enter upon a dramatic career. On one occasion he engaged to perform at Salerno for fifteen ducats a month; he received a month's pay in advance, remained two days at Naples, and spent it all. As, however, he did not like to go to Salerno without some portable effects, or the appearance at least of baggage, he took with him a trunk, which he filled with sand. Two days afterwards, the vice-rector, who had got upon his traces, arrived at Salerno, discovered him, and had him seized by sbirri whom he had brought for the purpose. The manager, to indemnify himself for the fifteen ducats paid in advance, took possession of the fugitive's trunk, and proceeded to make an inventory of its contents. It was opened, and to the infinite astonishment of all present, was found stuffed with-just what Lablache had put in it.

The youth's pranks, however, produced a good result for his comrades, and for art in general; a hall of representation was constructed in the interior of the conservatory, and from that time he had an opportunity of gratifying his passion for the stage. He no longer thought of flight, but prosecuted his studies, which he terminated at the age of seventeen.

We will not follow Lablache through the various theatres on which he performed previous to appearing before the Parisian public; it will suffice to say, that his talent was everywhere admired, everywhere sought to be retained; that the actor was fêted, the singer applauded, and that testimonials of regard were showered upon the individual.

It was in November 1830, that Lablache made his debut at the Théâtre Italien of Paris, in the part of Geronimo in the Matrimonio Segreto. It was a perfect triumph. He played the character with wonderful talent, and was at once acknowledged to be the first basse-taille of the epoch.

To obtain an idea of the power of this artist over the multitude, and the minds of the élite, one must attend a performance at the Italian Theatre, when he fills an important part. Scarcely does he make a step upon the boards when a great movement is remarked throughout the whole house, as if produced by an electric stroke. Imagine the most frigid, the most silent, or the most indifferent assemblage. Suddenly all heads are erect, all brows are expanded, all mouths are relaxed: Lablache has appeared. Behold that fine imposing countenance, those eyes in which are reflected the genius and frankness of the artist, that colossal, dignified figure. Lablache, both in person and voice, is the true type of the genuine basse-taille. He can put on all kinds of physiognomies, assume all kinds of characters; comic or serious, tragic or sentimental, he carries you away, captivates your imagination, and enchains all minds. He is a veritable Proteus. Marino Faliero or Doctor Dulcamara, the father of Desdemona or Don Magnifico, he makes you weep, or laugh, or shudder, at his will, and that by a look, a gesture, a mere movement of his body. The voice of Lablache descends to sol basso, and mounts to mi sharp. This is a very ordinary compass, as it only embraces thirteen notes, or an octave and a fifth; what renders his organ so marvellous is its timbre, its power, its vibration, its exquisite truth. One should hear him in grand concerted pieces, when all the other voices are in full development around him, and the orchestra is putting forth its entire strength. His voice rises above the whole, swaying both the stage and the orchestra, while the éclat of his tones is never confounded with the tones of the deeper instruments which double them. The effect which this magnificent organ adds to the power of the vocal and instrumental masses cannot be described; it is a cannon in the midst of a fire of musketry, it is thunder amid a tempest.

And yet how admirably he manages this enormous volume of sound; how skilfully he modifies it, giving it, when he pleases, grace and fascination, and sometimes even coquetry. Here, in our opinion, is the climax of art. Labour in his case has fashioned nature, without taking aught from its primitive beauty.

In the light style of music, he has been known to accomplish the most surprising feats. One evening the Preva d'un Opera Seria was performed; in the duo with Madame Malibran, the lady thought she would disconcert him by sundry embellishments absolutely bristling with difficulties, which she had prepared for the purpose, and which it was incumbent upon him to execute after her; but this snare laid for the throat of our singing Hercules only served to manifest its agility and suppleness -note for note, passage for passage, shade for shade, Lablache, with his voce di testa, repeated instantaneously all the phrases which Malibran had elaborated with so much trouble. Returning to the green-room, she could not refrain from expressing her astonishment at the ease with which he had surmounted the difficulties that she had thrown in his way; to which he replied, with his usual bonhommie, that he had not perceived the difficulties.

Lablache is not a singer in the sense commonly attached to this word. Do not therefore constantly ask him for flourishes, for traits dentalés, for ascending and descending chromatics; do not expect from him the grotesqueness of the point d'orgue, the whim of grace notes, and the embellishment of the Cadenza. He has no need to resort to such means for producing effect: he finds it in dramatic truth, in a perfect musical accentuation, in the sentiment of the art, which he possesses in the highest degree. As he is always obedient to truth, there is no singer who renders with more fidelity and intelligence, not only the productions of contemporaneous art, but also the ancient masterpieces, the execution of which has become so difficult for the singers of the day. He is indebted for all these qualities to profound study, such as

few artists now pursue. So far does he carry the love of his art, that he would never allow himself to appear on the stage without having satisfied himself, by all sorts of investigations, that everything in his costume and carriage is in exact accordance with the character and the epoch of the part he is about to perform. His first appearance as Henry VIII. in Anna Bolena, is still remembered in London. So striking was his resemblance to the original, that the spectators experienced a species of horror, as if they were gazing upon the tyrant himself.

The triumph of Lablache is in the opera buffa. Never did any basse-taille give recitative in a style more natural, with more amusing vivacity, and more sparkling humour. There is nothing more diverting than to behold this Rhodian colossus skipping and gambolling about the stage with sylphlike lightness; you fancy at every moment that he must sink beneath the weight of his body, and just as you think him prostrate, he flies off like a butterfly. Mi vedrai farfallone amoroso. An accomplished singer in tragedy as well as in comedy, an unrivalled actor in characters the most opposite, a theorist versed in his art, and competent to expound, define, exalt it, Lablache is thus a consummate artist. To these merits he joins literary attainments of a varied description, an acute intellect, and an elevated character, which renders him an object of affection and esteem to all by whom he is known.

RUBINI.

THERE is no name in the history of art more justly celebrated than that of Rubini. His reputation is colossal; he has been hailed king of singing by all Europe. No artist can be cited whose genius has manifested itself with more dazzling splendour, and has so long sustained itself with constantly increasing superiority.

Rubini is still young. He was born in 1795, at Romano, a small place situated about four leagues from Bergamo. In 1812, he made one of the chorus in the theatre of this town. He was afterwards attached to an itinerant troupe, from which, however, he soon separated for the purpose of undertaking a pilgrimage through Italy, in company with a violinist named Modi. But the tribulations and vicissitudes of this nomadic existence were little to his taste, and he accepted an engagement at Pavia. His success was there so great that he was successively called to Brescia, to Venice, and at length to Naples, where the director, Barbaja, brought him out with Pellegrini and Nozzari, in two operas which Fioravanti had composed for him. Adelson y Salvini and Comingio. In 1819, he appeared at Rome in the Gazza Ladra with Mlle. Mombelli; and at Palermo with Lablache and Donzelli. At Naples, whither he returned after those brilliant excursions, he met with Mlle. Chomel, a distinguished singer, who soon afterwards became his wife, and repaired with him to Vienna, where he experienced a memorable reception.

It was on the 6th of October 1833, that Rubini appeared for the first time in Paris, in the Cenerentola. Since that epoch, his career has been an uninterrupted series of triumphs, in France, in England, in Austria, in Italy, the cradle of his glory; they are too recent, and have shed too brilliant a lustre upon the musical world, to render it necessary to detail them here. Besides, it is not so much a biography that we wish to give of this great singer, as an analytical study upon his voice and his method, which, without ever having been committed to paper, has nevertheless exercised, like that of the Garcias, an incontestable influence over all the schools of vocalists.

The voice of Rubini is a tenor in the full reception of the word. It starts from mi, and ascends, in "notes of the breast," to si sharp; it continues, in "notes of the head," or falsetto, or fa, always with an intonation of perfect justness and equality. Thus the scale which it compasses is of two octaves and a note. But that is only its ordinary extent, for we have heard Rubini, in the Roberto D'Evereux of Donizetti, leap up to sol. True he had never gone so high before, and he himself seemed astonished at the feat. As to the power of his organ, it is never beneath what the strongest dramatic expression can exact from a singer. But this power, great as it is, never wounds the ear by too boisterous bursts. His voice is enveloped, as it were, in light gauze, which, without impeding its most rapid bounds, softens the asperities that are almost inseparable from an energetic vibration. Thence that sweetness, that indefinable charm, which spread around the singer, when he pours forth accents of tenderness and wo. It is of him that it may indeed be said, without exaggeration and almost without metaphor, that he has tears in his voice.

We willingly acknowledge that he is greatly indebted to nature for these rare and precious qualities; but what art has added to them is immense One of the

prodigies of that art is displayed in the passage from the voce di petto to the voce di testa, and vice versa. When he has reached the limits of his register of the breast, for example, si,—the change for the purpose of entering the falsetto is operated in so marvellous a way, that it is impossible to catch the moment of transition. Another of these prodigies is, that being gifted with very ample lungs, which demand a great quantity of air, he measures his respiration with such skill, that he loses only just so much of his breath as is requisite for producing the sound proportioned to the value of the notes. His manner of breathing is also one of those secrets of the art which it is impossible to describe. So adroitly does he conceal the artifice of respiration, that in the longest phrases you can never perceive the moment when the breath is taken. To understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to know that he fills and empties his lungs almost instantaneously and without the slightest interruption, as you would do with a cup which you should empty with one hand and fill with another. It may be imagined what advantage the singer derives from this faculty, which he owes as much to nature as to study. By its aid, he can give a brilliant and varied colouring to his phrases, as his organ preserves in its gradation the strength necessary to begin, to prosecute, and to conclude, without interruption, the longest periods.

There is no singer whose pipe is lighter, more agile, more flexible than that of Rubini. It tends itself to the most unforeseen, accidental, arduous caprices of composition. There are no ornaments, no fioriture, no passages, however difficult, which he cannot accomplish, and which he does not always succeed in accomplishing with the most marvellous perfection. His voice may set the most rapid instruments at defiance, and yet he knows how to be sparing of ornaments, and how to employ them with discretion. Rubini is perhaps the very first artist who, possessing that immense facility of execution, the success of which is always sure, has understood that the most astonishing embroideries are not in keeping with passionate situations. There are works, like Lucia di Lammermoor, in which he abstains from all embellishments. And then let it be said, that Rubini does not possess dramatic intelligence in the highest degree. It should still be proclaimed aloud, for connoisseurs as well as for the ignorant, that Rubini is both the most brilliant and the most expressive singer who has appeared upon the stage!

It is true that Rubini sometimes allows himself to play with his voice, and run riot in all sorts of gorghetti, to use the Italian phrase. Thus, in the famous duo of Mosé, which he sings with Tamburini, he stifles both the musical idea and the dramatic situation beneath a pile of ornaments. But we happen to know that this is a concession which Rubini makes with regret to that unintelligent part of his audience which cares little for truth, provided it be amused by difficulties of often very doubtful taste; just as some pretended lovers of painting take vastly more delight in gaudy, flaring hues, than in natural colouring and correct design.

There are people who will affirm that Rubini is a cold and stiff actor, if they do not even say that he is no actor at all. This is an error which it is easy to destroy. That immoveableness, for which he is reproached, is the necessary consequence of his mode of singing. Behold him in those famous adagios, when, motionless and with his head thrown back to open a wider passage for his voice, he pours forth those mellifluous, limpid, impassioned tones which waken such profound emotions! The slightest displacement of the body would cause that voice, which is now so sure of itself, to undulate, and would deprive it of that equality and finish of which the charm is indefinable. It is his voice that weeps, his voice that makes you weep. Talma himself, with his admirable pantomime, did not produce more thrilling effects.

No, it must not be imagined that Rubini is only a sublime singer, who moves his hearers only by the potency of his voice. He should be seen in scenes of rage and despair, in dramatic situations, where he darts forth his note like a thunderbolt, to obtain an idea of his mimic energy and the truth of his movements. In the finale of Otello and in the curse of Lucia, one is at a loss which to admire in him most— the consummate actor or the inimitable singer.

Such are the various aspects under which this fine sample of an artist is manifested. Nature and art have combined to render him a phenomenon. His voice is strong, sweet, equal, true; it was nature that made it so, and nature never showed herself more generous. His method is perfect, because it is based upon truth and the most exquisite taste. Rubini has brought to perfection the science of singing; he does better whatever was done before him, and moreover, art is indebted to him for many innovations with which all other methods have become enriched. Thus, to cite but a single example, Rubini was the first to introduce into singing those vigorous

aspirations, which might be called à répercussion, and which consist in prolonging a sound upon the same note, before the completion of the cadence. This shock given to the voice, this species of musical sob, always produces the greatest effect, and there is no singer now who does not endeavour to imitate it.

Nevetheless, as there is nothing entirely perfect in the world, Rubini also pays his tribute to human nature. In our opinion he is too negligent in his manner of phrasing the recitative. In concerted pieces, likewise, he does not even give himself the trouble to sing, and when it pleases him to open his mouth, it is only to keep the most absolute silence. It may be said that Rubini does not exist in morceaux d'ensemble. Often, too, he sings with his falsetto what he should sing with his natural voice. It is perhaps to these artifices that Rubini owes the complete preservation of his organ, which is as fresh now, as in his youth; but it is not less true that by such indolence he may injure the dramatic thoughts of the composer, and paralyse the efforts of his comrades.

We have said nothing of the character of Rubini, our object having been to speak of the artist; but we cannot conclude this rapid sketch without rendering homage to his generous sentiments, to the simplicity of his manners and the goodness of his heart. All his comrades, and all those who have approached him, can testify to his elevated qualities as an artist and a man.

TAMBURINI.

ANTONIO TAMBURINI is another child of fruitful Italy, that land which seems to console itself for its political degradation by the splendour of its artistical glory

Born at Faenza, on the 28th of March 1800, he received from his father, Pasquale Tamburini, a professor of music, that early education which directs gifted natures towards the destinies they are to accomplish. But the young instrumentalist, who at the age of nine years was filling with distinction a place in an orchestra, experienced instinctive promptings to another career; and, soon afterwards, was seen figuring in the choir of the church, and upon the stage of his native town. His success as a vocalist was such as to attract the notice of the elder Mombelli, of Madame Pisaroni, and of several other celebrated artists. At the age of eighteen, he made a triumphant début at the Cento theatre, in Bologna, in an opera by Generali; and next played at Mirandola and at Correggio, where he awakened the liveliest enthusiasm. The fame of his success drew upon him the attention of the Italian managers, and in 1819 he accepted an engagement for the theatre of Placenza, where is still preserved the memory of his brilliant performances in Cenerentola and the Italiana in Algieri. The same year he appeared at Naples. Pavesi, Generali, and Mercadente wrote for him, and enabled him to add some original creations to his triumphs.

Driven from Naples by the troubles of 1820, Tamburini appeared successively at Florence, Leghorn, Turin, and Milan. It was in this last city that he encountered Mlle. Marietta Gioja, whom he subsequently married, with whom he sang in the Posto Abandanato, which Mercadente had just written for them.

Mlle. Gioja was the daughter of the celebrated choreographer of that name, who died in 1826. Her mother was of French origin-the child of the Marquise de Pins, who married Count Gaëtani, a noble who had visited France in the suite of the king of Naples. The first husband of Madame Gioja was the Marquis de Misiallia, by whom she was left an immense fortune on condition of never marrying again; but having secretly espoused Gioja, and the fact being discovered, she was thrown into a convent, whence she was released by the protection of Marie Caroline. This lady, a woman of great beauty, who preferred the love of a poor artist to the splendours of her opulent condition, had three children by him, two sons and a daughter. The last is now Madame Tamburini.

A short time before his marriage, Tamburini had the misfortune to lose his mother, and such was his affliction that he had thoughts of retiring from the world and seeking an asylum in the church. Fortunately, at least for the art of which he is one of the glories, his application was rejected, or rather its immediate gratification was refused, on the ground of his being an actor, and time brought him back to his studies and toils.

Being engaged to perform at Trieste, Tamburini stopped at Venice on his way. The emperors of Austria and Russia happened at the time to be in the city of the doges. Either from their having expressed a desire to hear the young and already distinguished singer, or from the local authorities not being willing to allow the