Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum [69]
more studied performances. This, like all her brilliant things, if not impassioned in the cheaper superficial sense, was at all events vital, and from the soul. She is never mechanical, whatever you may say about want of passion. Is any tragic pathos, such as is ready on the smallest occasion, or on none, more admirable and more inspiring, more from the inmost soul, than is that gushing up of a full, glad, true heart which is her native mood of song, and which was so glorious last night in the Ah! non Giunge from Somnambula? The rapturous encore to this was answered by the Swedish 'Herdsman's Song.'
"It was in the song from Mozart's 'Magic Flute' that we first fully KNEW the voice and art and soul of Jenny Lind. She warmed to that music. It is narrow criticism which imprisons such a singer within the partial scope, albeit classical, of the Italian School; ignores that vital part of her which may exceed the conventional requirements of such a School, and condemns whatever in her is most characteristic, and in contrast with its models. It has been well said by those who make the most intelligent reference to those models and that school, that the style of the Swedish Nightingale is sui generis, as marked as her own personality. True, you would not say of her, in the conventional Italian sense of the word, what is often said in first acknowledgment of a good singer: 'She has STYLE'--meaning the one style which is assumed as the standard. If we are to limit style to that sense, Mdlle. Lind has more than style; she has genius--Northern genius, to be sure, which is precisely what she should have to make her greatness genuine. Song is original in her; and from her singing we drink in new life, after long satiety of such passion-sweets as have become habits rather than fresh inspirations in the delightful--we may almost say perfected--but yet confined music of the Italians.
"It is, perhaps, too late to await the advent of a Queen of Song from the warm South. The South has had its turn; it has fulfilled its mission; the other end of the balance now comes up. The Northern Muse must sing her lesson to the world. Her fresher, chaster, more intellectual, and (as they only SEEM to some) her colder strains come in due season to recover our souls from the delicious languor of a Music which has been so wholly of the Feelings, that, for the want of some intellectual tonic and some spiritual temper, Feeling has degenerated into mere Sensibility and a very cheap kind of superficial, skin-deep excitability that usurps the name of Passion.
"We admire and feel and love the Melody of Italy. We reverence her native gift of song, her popular sensibility to it. We have been again and again transported by her best vocal artists who have visited these shores, and they are not THE best--the world-wide celebrities, we have to confess, are only traditions to us--traditions, however, to which we yield ourselves in full faith. From what we HAVE heard and experienced of Italian singing, we know, as well as if we had heard Grisi, Pasta and Rubini, that it is not IN the genius of the Italian School to produce or hardly to appreciate such a new revelation of song as this human nightingale or canary of Sweden.
"Is this underrating the Italian music? By no means. That is an established fact, and has its characteristic worth. Equally so, but in a contrasted way has the music of the North, which, till this Nightingale appeared, had found its utterance mainly through instruments and orchestras. Now it finds worthy utterance in song. But of its peculiar characteristic we must take another time to speak."
CHAPTER XVIII. CONTINUED TRIUMPH.
SUCCESSFUL ADVERTISING--THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RICHES--VISIT TO IRANISTAN--OVATIONS AT BOSTON, PHILADELPHIA, BALTIMORE AND WASHINGTON--VISIT TO MT. VERNON--CHARLESTON--HAVANA--FREDERICKA BREMER.
All of Barnum's inventive powers were called into play effectually to advertise his song-bird. Biographies of Jenny Lind were circulated. "Foreign correspondence" raved over her talents, narratives of her benevolence
"It was in the song from Mozart's 'Magic Flute' that we first fully KNEW the voice and art and soul of Jenny Lind. She warmed to that music. It is narrow criticism which imprisons such a singer within the partial scope, albeit classical, of the Italian School; ignores that vital part of her which may exceed the conventional requirements of such a School, and condemns whatever in her is most characteristic, and in contrast with its models. It has been well said by those who make the most intelligent reference to those models and that school, that the style of the Swedish Nightingale is sui generis, as marked as her own personality. True, you would not say of her, in the conventional Italian sense of the word, what is often said in first acknowledgment of a good singer: 'She has STYLE'--meaning the one style which is assumed as the standard. If we are to limit style to that sense, Mdlle. Lind has more than style; she has genius--Northern genius, to be sure, which is precisely what she should have to make her greatness genuine. Song is original in her; and from her singing we drink in new life, after long satiety of such passion-sweets as have become habits rather than fresh inspirations in the delightful--we may almost say perfected--but yet confined music of the Italians.
"It is, perhaps, too late to await the advent of a Queen of Song from the warm South. The South has had its turn; it has fulfilled its mission; the other end of the balance now comes up. The Northern Muse must sing her lesson to the world. Her fresher, chaster, more intellectual, and (as they only SEEM to some) her colder strains come in due season to recover our souls from the delicious languor of a Music which has been so wholly of the Feelings, that, for the want of some intellectual tonic and some spiritual temper, Feeling has degenerated into mere Sensibility and a very cheap kind of superficial, skin-deep excitability that usurps the name of Passion.
"We admire and feel and love the Melody of Italy. We reverence her native gift of song, her popular sensibility to it. We have been again and again transported by her best vocal artists who have visited these shores, and they are not THE best--the world-wide celebrities, we have to confess, are only traditions to us--traditions, however, to which we yield ourselves in full faith. From what we HAVE heard and experienced of Italian singing, we know, as well as if we had heard Grisi, Pasta and Rubini, that it is not IN the genius of the Italian School to produce or hardly to appreciate such a new revelation of song as this human nightingale or canary of Sweden.
"Is this underrating the Italian music? By no means. That is an established fact, and has its characteristic worth. Equally so, but in a contrasted way has the music of the North, which, till this Nightingale appeared, had found its utterance mainly through instruments and orchestras. Now it finds worthy utterance in song. But of its peculiar characteristic we must take another time to speak."
CHAPTER XVIII. CONTINUED TRIUMPH.
SUCCESSFUL ADVERTISING--THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF RICHES--VISIT TO IRANISTAN--OVATIONS AT BOSTON, PHILADELPHIA, BALTIMORE AND WASHINGTON--VISIT TO MT. VERNON--CHARLESTON--HAVANA--FREDERICKA BREMER.
All of Barnum's inventive powers were called into play effectually to advertise his song-bird. Biographies of Jenny Lind were circulated. "Foreign correspondence" raved over her talents, narratives of her benevolence