Chapter 4

She was the daughter of Sophia Schröder, the Siddons of Germany. This distinguished actress for a long time reigned supreme in her art. Her deep sensibilities and dramatic instincts, her noble elocution and stately beauty, fitted her admirably for tragedy. In such parts as _Phèdre, Medea, Lady Macbeth, Mérope, Sappho, Jeanne de Montfaucon, and Isabella_ in "The Bride of Messina," she had no pere. Wilhelmina Schröder was born in Hamburg, October 6, 1805, and was destined by her mother for a stage career. In pursuance of this, the child appeared at the age of five years as a little Cupid, and at ten danced in the ballet at the Imperial Theatre of Vienna. With the gradual development of the young girl's character came the ambition for a higher grade of artistic work. So, when she arrived at the age of fifteen, her mother, who wished her to appear in tragedy, secured for her a position at the Burgtheater of Vienna, where she played in such parts as _Aricie_ in "Phèdre," and _Ophelia_ in "Hamlet." The impression she made was that of a great nascent actress, who would one day worthily fill the place of her mother. But the true scope of her genius was not yet defined, for she had not studied music. At last she was able to study under an Italian master of great repute, named Mazzatti, who resided in the Austrian capital.

Her first appearance was as _Pamina_ in Mozart's "Zauberflote," at the Vienna theatre, January 20, 1821. The _débutante_ was warmly welcomed by an appreciative audience, and the terrors of the young girl of seventeen were quickly assuaged by the generous recognition she received. The beauty of her voice, her striking figure and port, and her dramatic genius, combined to make her instantly successful. Wilhelmina Schröder was tall and nobly molded, and her face, though not beautiful, was sweet, frank, and fascinating--a face which became transfigured with fire and passion under the influence of strong emotion. Her vocal organ was a mellow soprano, which, though not specially flexible, united softness with volume and compass. In intonation and phrasing, her art, in spite of her youth and inexperience, showed itself to be singularly perfect. Though she rapidly became a favorite, her highest triumph was not achieved till she appeared as _Leonora_ in the "Fidelio." In this she eclipsed all who had preceded her, and Germany soon rang with her name as that of an artist of the highest genius. Her own account of her first representation of this rôle is of much interest:

"When I was studying the character of _Leonora_ at Vienna, I could not attain that which appeared to me the desired and natural expression at the moment when _Leonora_, throwing herself before her husband, holds out a pistol to the Governor, with the words, 'Kill first his wife!' I studied and studied in vain, though I did all in my power to place myself mentally in the situation of _Leonora_. I had pictured to myself the situation, but I felt that it was incomplete, without knowing why or wherefore. Well, the evening arrived; the audience knows not with what feelings an artist, who enters seriously into a part, dresses for the representation. The nearer the moment approached, the greater was my alarm. When it did arrive, and as I ought to have sung the ominous words and pointed the pistol at the Governor, I fell into such an utter tremor at the thought of not being perfect in my character, that my whole frame trembled, and I thought I should have fallen. Now only fancy how I felt when the whole house broke forth with enthusiastic shouts of applause, and what I thought when, after the curtain fell, I was told that this moment was the most effective and powerful of my whole representation! So, that which I could not attain with every effort of mind and imagination, was produced at this decisive moment by my unaffected terror and anxiety. This result and the effect it had upon the public taught me how to seize and comprehend the incident, so, that which at the first representation I had hit upon unconsciously, I adopted in full consciousness ever afterward in this part."

Not even Malibran could equal her in the impersonation of this character. Never was dramatic performance more completely, more intensely affecting, more deeply pathetic, truthful, tender, and powerful.

Some critics regarded her as far more of the tragedian than the singer. "Her voice, since I have known it," observes Mr. Chorley, in his "Modern German Music," "was capable of conveying poignant or tender expression, but it was harsh and torn--not so inflexible as incorrect. Mme. Schröder-Devrient resolved to be _par excellence_ 'the German dramatic singer.' Earnest and intense as was her assumption of the parts she attempted, her desire of presenting herself first was little less vehement: there is no possibility of an opera being performed by a company, each of whom should be as resolute as she was never to rest, never for an instant to allow the spectator to forget his presence. She cared not whether she broke the flow of the composition by some cry heard on any note or in any scale--by even speaking some word, for which she would not trouble herself to study a right musical emphasis or inflection--provided, only, she succeeded in continuing to arrest the attention. Hence, in part, arose her extraordinary success in "Fidelio." That opera contains, virtually, only one acting character, and with her it rests to intimate the thrilling secret of the whole story, to develop this link by link, in presence of the public, and to give the drama the importance of terror, suspense, and rapture. When the spell is broken by exhibiting the agony and the struggle of which she is the innocent victim, if the devotion, the disguise, and the hope of Leonora, the wife, were not for ever before us, the interest of the prison-opera would flag and wane into a cheerless and incurable melancholy. This Mme. Schröder-Devrient took care that it should never do. From her first entry upon the stage, it might be seen that there was a purpose at her heart, which could make the weak strong and the timid brave; quickening every sense, nerving every fiber, arming its possessor with disguise against curiosity, with persuasion more powerful than any obstacle, with expedients equal to every emergency.... What Pasta would be in spite of her uneven, rebellious voice, a most magnificent singer, Mme. Schröder-Devrient did not care to be, though nature, as I have heard from those who heard her sing as a girl, had blessed her with a fresh, delicious soprano voice."

II.

Her fame so increased that the Fräulein Schröder soon made an art-tour through Germany. Her appearances at Cassel in the spring of 1823, in such characters as _Pamina_ and _Agathe_, produced a great sensation. At Dresden she also evoked a large share of popular enthusiasm, and her name was favorably compared with the greatest lights of the German lyric stage. While singing at this capital she met Carl Devrient, one of the principal dramatic tenors of Germany, and, an attachment springing up between the pair, they were married. The union did not prove a happy one, and Mme. Schröder-Devrient had bitter occasion to regret that she had tied her fortunes to a man utterly unworthy of love and respect. She remained for several years at Dresden, and among other operas she appeared in Weber's "_Euryanthe_," with Mme. Funk, Herr Berg-mann, and Herr Meyer. She also made a powerful impression on the attention of both the critics and the public in Cherubini's "Faniska," and Spohr's "Jessonda," both of which operas are not much known out of Germany, though "Faniska" was first produced at the Théâtre Feydeau, in Paris, and contributed largely to the fame of its illustrious composer. The austere, noble music is not of a character to please the multitude who love what is sensational and easily understood. When "Faniska" was first produced at the Austrian capital in the winter of 1805, both Haydn and Beethoven were present. The former embraced Cherubini, and said to him, "You are my son, worthy of my love"; while Beethoven cordially hailed him as "the first dramatic composer of the age." The opera of "Faniska" is based on a Polish legend of great dramatic beauty, and the unity of idea and musical color between it and Beethoven's "Fidelio" has often excited the attention of critics. It is perhaps owing to this dramatic similarity that Mme. Schröder-De vrient made as much reputation by her performance of it as she had already acquired in Beethoven's lyric masterpiece.

In 1828 she went to Prague, and thence to Berlin, where her marriage was judicially dissolved, she retaining her guardianship of her son, then four years old. Spontini, who was then the musical autocrat of Berlin, conceived a violent dislike to her, and his bitter nature expressed itself in severe and ungenerous sarcasms. But the genius of the singer was proof against the hostility of the Franco-Italian composer, and the immense audiences which gathered to hear her interpret the chef-d'ouvres of Weber, whose fame as the great national composer of Germany was then at its zenith, proved her strong hold on the hearts of the German people. Spontini's prejudice was generally attributed to Mme. Devrient's dislike of his music and her artistic identification with the heroines of Weber, for whose memory Spontini entertained much the same envious hate as Salieri felt for Mozart in Vienna at an earlier date.

Our singer's ambition sighed to conquer new worlds, and in 1830 she went to Paris with a troupe of German singers, headed by Mme. Fischer, a tall blonde beauty, with a fresh, charming voice, but utterly Mme. Schrôder-Devrient's inferior in all the requirements of the great artist. She made her _début_ in May at the Theatre Louvois, as _Agathe_ in "Der Freischutz," and, though excessively agitated, was so impressive and powerful in the impersonation as to create a great _éclat_. The critics were highly pleased with the beauty and finish of her style. She produced the principal parts of her _répertoire_ in "Fidelio," "Don Giovanni," Weber's "Oberon" and "Euryanthe," and Mozart's "Serail." It was in "Fidelio," however, that she raised the enthusiasm of her audiences to the highest pitch. On returning again to Germany she appeared in opera with Scheckner and Sontag, in Berlin, winning laurels even at the expense of Mme. Sontag, who was then just on the eve of retiring from the stage, and who was inspired to her finest efforts as she was departing from the field of her triumphs.

Two years later Mme. Schröder-Devrient accepted a proposition made to her by the manager of the Théâtre Italiens to sing in a language and a school for which she was not fully qualified. The season opened with such a dazzling constellation of genius as has rarely, if ever, been gathered on any one stage--Pasta, Malibran, Schröder-Devrient, Rubini, Bordogni, and Lablache. Mme. Pasta's illness caused the substitution of Schröder-Devrient in her place in the opera of "Anna Bolena," and the result was disastrous to the German singer. But she retrieved herself in the same composer's "Pirata," and her splendid performance cooperated with that of Rubini to produce a sensation. It was observed that she quickly accommodated herself to the usages and style of the Italian stage, and soon appeared as if one "to the manner born." Toward the close of the engagement Mme. Devrient appeared for Malibran's benefit as _Desdemona_, Rubini being the Moor. Though the Rossinian music is a _genre_ by itself, and peculiarly dangerous to a singer not trained in its atmosphere and method, the German artist sang it with great skill and finish, and showed certain moments of inspiration in its performance which electrified her hearers.

Mme. Schrëder-Devrient's first appearance in England was under the management of Mr. Monck Mason, who had leased the King's Theatre in pursuance of a somewhat daring enterprise. A musical and theatrical enthusiast, and himself a composer, though without any experience in the practical knowledge of management, he projected novel and daring improvements, and aspired to produce opera on the most extensive and complete scale. He engaged an enormous company--not only of Italian and German, but of French singers--and gave performances in all three languages. Schröder-Devrient sang in all her favorite operas, and also _Desdemona_, in Italian. Donzelli was the _Otello_, and the performance made a strong impression on the critics, if not on the public. "We know not," wrote one, "how to say enough of Mme. Schrëder-Devrient without appearing extravagant, and yet the most extravagant eulogy we could pen would not come up to our idea of her excellence. She is a woman of first-rate genius; her acting skillful, various, impassioned, her singing pure, scientific, and enthusiastic. Her whole soul is wrapped in her subject, yet she never for a moment oversteps the modesty of nature." It was during this season that Mr. Chorley first heard her. He writes in his "Musical Recollections" a vivid description of her appearance in "Fidelio": "She was a pale woman. Her face, a thoroughly German one, though plain, was pleasing from the intensity of expression which her large features and deep, tender eyes conveyed. She had profuse fair hair, the value of which she thoroughly understood, delighting in moments of great emotion to fling it loose with the wild vehemence of a Mænad. Her figure was superb, though full, and she rejoiced in its display." He also speaks of "the inherent expressiveness of her voice which made it more attractive on the stage than a more faultless organ." Mme. Schröder-Devrient met a warm social welcome in London from the family of the great pianist, Moscheles, to whom she was known of old. Mme. Moscheles writes in her diary: "Our interesting guests at dinner were the Haizingers, he the admirable tenor singer of whom the German opera company here may well be proud, she pretty and agreeable as ever; we had, too, our great Schröder and our greater Mendelssohn. The conversation, of course, was animated, and the two ladies were in such spirits that they not only told anecdotes, but accompanied them with dramatic gestures; Schröder, when telling us how he (the hero of her anecdote) drew his sword, flourished her knife in a threatening manner toward Haizinger, and Mendelssohn whispered to me, 'I wonder what John [the footman] thinks of such an English vivacity? To see the brandishing of knives, and not know what it is all about! Only think!'" A comic episode which occurred during the first performance of "Fidelio" is also related by the same authority: "In that deeply tragic scene where Mme. Schröder (_Fidelio_) has to give Haizinger (_Florestan_) a piece of bread which she has kept hidden for him three days in the folds of her dress, he does not respond to the action. She whispers to him with a rather coarse epithet: 'Why don't you take it? Do you want it buttered?' All this time, the audience, ignorant of the by-play, was solely intent on the pathetic situation." This is but one of many instances which could be adduced from the annals of the stage showing how the exhibition of the greatest dramatic passion is consistent with the existence of a jocose, almost cynical, humor on the part of the actors.

III.

In the following year (1833), Mme. Schröder-Devrient sang under Mr. Bunn at the Covent Garden Theatre, appearing in several of Weber's and Mozart's masterpieces. She was becoming more and more of a favorite with the English public. The next season she devoted herself again to the stage of Germany, where she was on the whole best understood and appreciated, her faults more uniformly ignored. She appeared in twelve operas by native composers in Berlin, and thence went to Vienna and St. Petersburg. She proceeded to Italy in 1835, where she sang for eighteen months in the principal cities and theatres of that country, and succeeded in evoking from the critical Italians as warm a welcome as she had commanded elsewhere. In one city the people were so enthusiastic that they unharnessed her horses, and drew her carriage home from the theatre after her closing performance. Although she never entirely mastered the Italian school, she yet displayed so much intelligence, knowledge, and faculty in her art-work, that all catholic lovers of music recognized her great talents. She appeared again in Vienna in 1836, with Mme. Tadolini, Genaro, and Galli, singing in "L'Elisir d'Amore," and works of a similar cast, operas unsuited, one would think, to the peculiar _cachet_ of her genius, but her ability in comic and romantic operas, though never so striking as in grand tragedy, seemed to develop with practice.

Her last English engagement was in 1837, opening the season with a performance of "Fidelio" in English. The whole performance was lamentably inferior to that at the Opera-House in 1832. "Norma" was produced, Schröder-Devrient being seconded by Wilson, Giubilei, and Miss Betts. She was either very ill advised or overconfident, for her "massy" style of singing was totally at variance with the light beauty of Bellini's music. Her conception of the character, however, was in the grandest style of histrionic art. "The sibyls of Michael Angelo are not more grand," exclaimed one critic; "but the vocalization of Pasta and Grisi is wholly foreign to her." During this engagement, Mme. Schröder-Devrient was often unable to perform, from serious illness. From England she went to the Lower Rhine.

In 1839 she was at Dresden with Herr Tichatschek, one of the first tenors of Germany, a handsome man, with a powerful, sweet, and extensive voice. In June, 1841, she gave a performance at Berlin, to assist the Parisian subscription for a monument to Cherubini. The opera was "Les Deux Journées," in which she took her favorite part of _Constance_. The same year she sang at Dresden with the utmost success, in a new _rôle_ in Goethe's "Tasso," in which she was said to surpass her _Fidelio_. For several years Mme. Schröder-Devrient resided in perfect seclusion in the little town of Rochlitz, and appeared to have forgotten all her stage ambition. Suddenly, however, she made her reappearance at Dresden in the _rôle_ of _Romeo_ in Bellini's "I Montecchi ed i Capuletti." She had lost a good deal of her vocal power and skill, yet her audiences seemed to be moved by the same magic glamour as of old, in consequence of her magnificent acting. Among other works in which she performed during this closing operatic season of her life was Gluck's "Iphigenie en Aulis," which was especially revived for her. Johanna Wagner, the sister of the great composer, was also in the cast, and a great enthusiasm was created by a general stage presentation of almost unparalleled completeness for that time.

Mme. Devrient retired permanently from the stage in the year 1849, having amassed a considerable fortune by her professional efforts. She made a second matrimonial venture with a rich Livonian proprietor named Bock, with whom she retired to his estate. Her retirement occasioned profound regret throughout Germany, where she was justly looked on as one of the very greatest artists, if, indeed, even this reservation could be made, who had ever shone on their lyric stage. The Emperor Francis I. paid Mme. Schröder a compliment which had never before been paid to a German singer. He ordered her portrait to be painted in all her principal characters, and placed in the collection of the Imperial Museum. Six years after her farewell from the stage, an Italian critic, Scudo, heard her sing in a private house in Paris, and speaks very disparagingly of her delivery of the melodies of Schubert in a weak, thin voice. She, like Malibran, possessed one of those voices which needed incessant work and practice to keep it in good order, though she did not possess the consummate musical knowledge and skill of Malibran. She was a woman of great intelligence and keen observation; an artist of the most passionate ardor and impetuosity, always restrained, however, by a well-studied control and reserve; in a word, a great lyric tragedienne rather than a great singer in the exact sense of that word. She must be classed with that group of dramatic singers who were the interpreters of the school of music which arose in Germany after the death of Mozart, and which found its most characteristic type in Carl Maria von Weber, for Beethoven, who on one side belongs to this school, rather belonged to the world, like Shakespeare in the drama, than to a single nationality. Mme. Schröder-De-vrient died February 9, 1860, at Cologne, and the following year her marble bust was placed in the Opera-House at Berlin.

GIULIA GRISI.

The Childhood of a Great Artist.--Giulietta Grisi's Early Musical Training.--Giuditta Grisi's Pride in the Talents of her Young Sister.--Her Italian _Début_ and Success.--She escapes from a Managerial Taskmaster and takes Refuge in Paris.--Impression made on French Audiences.--Production of Bellini's "Puritani."--Appearance before the London Public.--Character of Grisi's Singing and Acting.--Anecdotes of the Prima Donna.--Marriage of Mlle. Grisi.--Her Connection with Other Distinguished Singers.--Rubini, his Character as an Artist, and Incidents of his Life.--Tamburini, another Member of the First Great "Puritani" Quartet.--Lablache, the King of Operatic Bassos.--His Career as an Artist.--His Wonderful Genius as Singer and Actor.--Advent of Mario on the Stage.--His Intimate Association with Mme. Grisi as Woman and Artist.--Incidents of Mario's Life and Character as an Artist.--Grisi's Long Hold on the Stage for more than a Quarter Century.--Her American Tour.--Final Retirement from her Profession.--The Elements of her Greatness as a Goddess of Song.

I.

A quarter of a century is a long reign for any queen, a brilliant one for an opera queen in these modern days, when the "wear and tear" of stage-life is so exacting. For so long a time lasted the supremacy of Mme. Grisi, and it was justified by a remarkable combination of qualities, great physical loveliness, a noble voice, and dramatic impulse, which, if not precisely inventive, was yet large and sympathetic. A celebrated English critic sums up her great qualities and her defects thus: "As an artist calculated to engage, and retain the average public, without trick or affectation, and to satisfy by her balance of charming attributes--by the assurance, moreover, that she was giving the best she knew how to give--she satisfied even those who had received much deeper pleasure and had been impressed with much deeper emotion in the performances of others. I have never tired of Mme. Grisi during five-and-twenty years; but I have never been in her case under one of those spells of intense enjoyment and sensation which make an epoch in life, and which leave a print on memory never to be effaced by any later attraction, never to be forgotten so long as life and power to receive shall endure."