USA > New York > Old New York : or, Reminiscences of the past sixty years > Part 25
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unite in sympathy with him. Yet after the lapse of a generation the gratifying intelligence was an- nounced that Charles Kemble and his accom- plished daughter, Miss Fanny Kemble, had reached our shores. This was in 1831. The reputation of the father had long been established ; his comic and his tragic abilities were matters of record in dramatic annals ; his Charles Surface, his Mirabel, his Edgar, his Pierre, and his Falconbridge, were the parts that won him his brightest laurels ; and his other achievements were crowned by his Ham- let. His daughter, Fanny, enlisted the warmest plaudits, and soon increased admiration by every new display of histrionic talent. She assumed tragic and comic parts, and demonstrated that she was fairly entitled to her hereditary honors.
Dismissing further remarks on this gifted lady's stage-acting, I shall add a few words on her read- ings. As the last representative of this remark- able family now among us, Mrs. Kemble, since her retirement from the stage, has again and again delighted intellectual audiences in our principal cities by Shakspearian readings. She possesses in an eminent degree the physical superiority and the mental force of her kindred. Her voice is of great compass, singularly flexible, and capable of every tone of emotional significance ; we have the ring- ing laugh of Beatrice, when Benedick offers him- self, and the heart-rending cry of Macduff, " he
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has no children ;" the change of her voice is almost ventriloquism. She possesses a rare sympathetic intelligence whereby she is able to illustrate the feeling and the sentiment of Shakspeare, and the secret of her wondrous elocutionary success is ap- parent. She adapts her voice, expression of coun- tenance, gesture and manner, to the respective parts in each drama, and this with an artistic skill and earnest feeling which charm the auditor. She comprehends the true depths of inspiration, feels what she acts and acts what she feels ; now the gentle, innocent Olivia, now the dissimulating fiend Lady Macbeth ; when listening you forget that one is reading, you see and hear all ; so sud- den is her transition in dialogue-so rapid the change of every expression. Night after night to crowded audiences, she thus gave us the highest pleasure without the artificial illusions of the stage in its palmy days. In comic dialogue and in im- passioned soliloquy she seems inspired, and revives the richest memories of those histrionic triumphs which have made for ever celebrated the names of her illustrious aunt and classic father.
Were my individual feelings to be consulted, I would fain dwell at some length on the introduc- tion of the Garcia Italian opera troupe in this city as an historical occurrence in intellectual progress of permanent interest. It was destined to create new feelings, to awaken new sentiments in the cir-
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clc of refined and social life, and its mission I believe is accomplished. The opera, whatever may be the disputes touching its origin, was known to be the offspring of genius. It had universal ap- proval as an exalted mental recreation to recom- mend it ; its novelty here secured prompt atten- tion to its claims, and its troupe of artists who honored us with their entrée were considered the recognized professors of the highest order in the art. It captivated the eye, it charmed the car, it awakened the profoundest emotions of the hcart. It paralyzed all further eulogiums on the casual song-singing herctofore interspersed in the English comedy, and rendered the popular airs of the drama, which had possession of the feelings, the lifelcss materials of childish ignorance. Something, per- haps, was to be ascribed to fashionable emotion, for this immediate popular ascendency. For this advantageous accession to the resources of mental gratification, wc were indebted to the taste and refinement of Dominick Lynch, the liberality of the manager of the Park Theatre, Stephen Price, and the distinguished reputation of the Venetian, Lorenzo Da Ponte. Lynch, a native of New York, was the acknowledged head of the fashionable and festive board, a gentleman of the ton, and a melo- dist of great powers and of exquisite taste ; he had long striven to enhance the character of our music ; he was the master of English song, but he
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felt, from his close cultivation of music and his knowledge of the genius of his countrymen, that much was wanting, and that more could be accom- plished, and he sought out, while in Europe, an Italian troupe, which his persuasive eloquence and the liberal spirit of Price led to embark for our shores, where they arrived in November, 1825. The old Italian poet and composer of the libretto of Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, the as- sociate of Mozart, was here in this city to greet them, and on the night of 29th of October, 1825, at the Park Theatre, we listened to Il Barbiere de Seviglie of the matchless Rossini.
More was realized by the immense multitude who filled the house than had been anticipated, and the opera ended with an universal shout of bravo, bravissimo. The city reverberated the ac- clamations. The indomitable energy of Garcia, aided by his melodious strains and his exhaustless powers, the bewitching talents of his daughter, the Signorina Garcia, with her artistic faculties as an actress, and her flights of inspirations, the novelty of her conception, and her captivating person, proved that a galaxy of genius in a novel vocation unknown to the New World, demanded now its patronage. To these primary personages, as making up the roll, were added Angrisani, whose bass seemed as the peal of the noted organ at Haerlem ; Rosich, a buffo of great resources ;
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Crevelli, a promising debutante ; the younger Garcia, with Signora Garcia, and Madame Bar- biere with her capacious tenor, constituting a mu- sical phalanx which neither London nor Paris could surpass, nay, at that time could not equal. From the moment that first night's entertainment closed, I looked upon the songs of Phillips (which had made Coleman, the editor, music-mad), the melodies of Moore, and even the ballads of Scot- land, as shorn of their popularity, and even now I think myself not much in error in holding to the same opinion. The Italian opera is an elaboration of many thoughts, of intelligence extensive and various ; while it assimilates itself by its harmo- nious construction and entirety, it becomes effec- tive by external impression and rational com- bination. It blends instruction with delight ; if it does not make heroes, it at least leads captive the noblest attributes of humanity ; and had a larger forethought and wiser government watched over its destinies, it might still exist in its attractive displays as a permanent institution in this en- lightened and liberal metropolis.
I must add a few words on that great Maestro, Garcia. It is true that his vast reputation is secured for the future by his biographer ; he was a suc- cessful teacher, a composer of many operas, and his merits as a performer are fresh in the recollec- tions of the operatic world ; but it is sometimes
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profitable to cast a backward glance over what we have lost. He was a native of Seville, reared in Spanish music, and in fulfilling his part in that rôle with enthusiasm, was summoned in 1809 to Paris, where he was the first Spanish musician that appeared in that capital. Garat, on hearing him, exclaimed, " The Andalusian purity of the man makes me all alive." Prince Murat chose him as first tenor of his own chapel in 1812, at Naples. Catalane obtained him for her first tenor, 1816, in Paris. Here Rossini saw him, and ar- ranged affairs so that he appeared in the Barber of Seville, of which he was the original represent- ative. He visited England in 1817, where his wonderful powers were still higher extolled, from his Othello and his Don Juan. In Paris our New York friend Lynch found him, and proffered in- ducements for him to visit America. Here his combined qualities as singer and actor, have never been equalled ; his Othello, for force, just discrimi- nation, and expression, astounding the beholder, and filling the house with raptures. His career in Mexico followed ; and sad to relate, while on his return to Vera Cruz, he was beset by ban- ditti, stripped of his clothing, and plundered of his 1000 oz. of gold (about $17,000 of our money), the results of his severe earnings : penniless he finally reached Paris, to resume his professional labors. His spirits failed him not, but his musical
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powers were on the wane, and being the first to detect the decline of his great talents, and too honest to pass a counterfeit note, he left the operatic boards and died in 1836, aged fifty-eight.
From the sixth year of his age, and through life, Garcia was the arbiter of his own fortunes. He may be pronounced the restorer of Mozart and the promulgator of Rossini's matchless works. His daughter, afterwards Madame Malibran, eclipsed even the talents of her father ; and her abilities are still a popular topic of conversation. She had the rare gift of possessing the contralto and the soprano. Her ardor, both as actress and as singer, exhibited almost a frantic enthusiasm. Animated by the lofty consciousness of genius, the novelty of her conceptions, her vivid pictures, her inex- haustible spirits, had never been equalled by any predecessor in her calling. She had no Farinelli for an instructor, but the tremendous energy, not to say severity of her father, brought out the facul- tics of her voice to the wonder of all who heard her. She may be said to have been consumed by the' fire of her own genius. Her "Una Voce " and other airs reached the highest point of instru- mentation, according to the opinion of the most astute judges. She has been followed by no imi- tator, because none could approach her. Recently with Alboni and Jenny Lind we have had a par- tial echo of her. Perhaps her ravishing person
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served to swell the tide of public approbation of her ravishing voice. She enchained eyes and ears. Her earlier (not her earliest) efforts were first ap- preciated at the Park Theatre, and the predictions therc uttered of her ultimate victories, were fully verificd on her return to England. So far Ameri- can appreciation did honor to the then state of musical culture with the New Yorkers.
In my medical capacity I became well ac- quainted with the Garcia troupe ; they possessed good constitutions and took little physic ; but what I would aim at in the few remarks I have yet to make is, to show that those who are not ar- tists little know the toil demanded for eminent success in the musical world. Some twelve or six- teen hours' daily labor may secure a medical man from want in this city of great expenses and moderatc fees ; more than that time may earnestly be devoted for many years to secure the fame of a great opera singer. It seemed to me that the troupe were never idle. They had not crossed the Atlantic twenty-four hours ere they were at their notes and their instruments, and when we add their public labors at the theatre, more than half of the twenty-four hours was consumed in their pursuit. A President of the United States or a Lord Chancellor methinks might be easier reared than a Malibran. I dismiss all allusion to nature's gifts and peculiar aptitudes. It is assumed that
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brains are demanded in all intellectual business The simplicity of life, and the prescribed tem- perance of these musical people, was another lesson taught me. How many things are attended to lest the voice may suffer. A taste of claret, a glass of lemonade, eau suerée, were all the drinks tolerated, and seareely a partiele of animal food until the opera was over, when, at midnight, a comfortable supper refreshed their exhausted spirits and gave repose to their limbs. The youth who aims at distinction in physie, in law, or in divinity, and who is at all eursed with indolenee, might profit by studying the lives of these masters in song, as the naturalist philosophizes with the habits of the bee.
Many of this assembly, and particularly the ladies who now grace this audience, must well re- member their old teacher, Signor Lorenzo Da Ponte, so long a professor of Italian literature in Columbia College, the stately nonogenarian whose white loeks so richly ornamented his elassieal front and his graceful and elegant person. He falls within the compass of this imperfeet address from his " lonely eonspieuity," for the taste he cherished, and the industry he displayed in the cultivation of Italian letters ; more than two thousand scho- lars having been initiated in the language of Italy by him, and he is still more intervoven with our theme by his enthusiastie efforts to establish the
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Italian opera with us. He was upwards of sixty years of age upon his arrival in America, but en- joyed sturdy manhood. His credentials to con- sideration challenged the estecm of the philosopher, the poet, and the man of letters. His long and eventful life deserves an ample record. His own Memoirs in part supply our wants, and the sketch of his life by one of the members of our Historical Society, Samuel Ward, is a grateful tribute to his character, from the pen of an accomplished scholar and competent judge of his peculiar merits. I enjoyed the acquaintance of Da Ponte some twenty years. Kelly, in his reminiscences, has given us some idea of his early personal appearance and his fanciful costume at the London opera. But his glory and inward consolation had not been attained until the Garcia troupe triumphed at New York, as erst at Vienna, in Don Giovanni. The lan- guage of Italy and her music were deeply-rooted in his heart.
A fair estimate may be formed of the great extent and variety of Da Ponte's knowledge, of his deep devotion to the mental capacity of Italy, his adoration of her language, and his laudations of her mighty authors ; the strength, the copious- ness and the sweetness of her language, and the fertility and special excellence of her divine music, by a perusal of his elaborate pamphlet which he published in New York in 1821, entitled Sull'
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Italia. Discorso Apologetico in risposta alla let- tera dell' advocato Carlo Phillips. I was of the audience when Da Ponte delivered this Discourse in English before a large assemblage, with all the earnestness and animation of a great speaker. The work itself took its origin from the aspersions cast upon the Italian character by the British press, at the time when the English papers were filled with the details of the alleged corrupt eonduet of Caro- line, the queen consort of George the Fourth, and of the Italian witnesses. The copious stores of Da Ponte's reading ean be estimated by a perusal of this vindication of his country and his country- men. In reference to his native tongue he thus speaks : " With her good fortune, Italy for five hundred years has preserved her charming lan- guage. That language which, from its united sweetness, delieacy, force, and richness, compares with every aneient language, and surpasses every modern tongue ; which equals in sublimity the Greek, the Latin in magnificence, in grandeur and conciseness the Hebrew, the German in boldness, in majesty the Spanish, and the English in energy. That language in fine, which Providence bestowed on the Italians, because so perfectly adapted in its almost supernatural harmoniousness to the deli- cacy of their organs and perceptions, to the vivacity of their minds, and to the complexion of their ideas and sentiments, and which was formed
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so justly to illustrate their character." This pamphlet by Da Ponte is well worth an attentive perusal at the present day, and is not to be classed among ephemeral productions.
It was a day of lofty thought for the old pa- triarch, says his American biographer, when came among us Garcia with his lovely daughter, then in the morning of her renown ; Rosich, the inimi- table buffo ; Angrisani with his tomb note, and Madame Barbiere, all led by our lamented Alma- viva.# I must refer to the able articles on the introduction of the opera, written by a philosoph- ical critic in the New York Review and Athe- neum Magazine for December, 1825. They con- stitute a record of the social progress of this city that cannot be overlooked. Da Ponte died in New York in August, 1838, at ninety years. His remains were followed to the grave by many of our most distinguished citizens, among whom were the venerable Clement C. Moore, the Hon. G. C. Ver- planck, Pictro Maroncelli, the fellow-prisoner of Sylvio Pellico, and his physician, &c. That his long life created no wasting infirmity of mind, was shown in a striking manner by his publication of a portion of the poet Hillhouse's Hadad, not long before his final illness, and which he beautifully rendered in Italian with scholastic fidelity. The
* Dominick Lynch, Esq.
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day before his death he honored me with a series of verses in his native tongue, partly I concluded, in token of gratitude, and partly to evince to his friends, that though speech had nigh left him his mind was still entire. He died firm in the Catho- lic faith, and was buried in the Roman Catholic cemetery, Second Avenue.
Mr. Ward, his American biographer, in his sketch has thus pictorially described the last hours of the venerable Da Ponte. "The closing thirty years of an existence, so rife with incident and adventure, terminated in this city at nine o'clock on Friday evening, the seventeenth day of August, 1838, just three months after the decease of Prince Talleyrand, whom he preceded five years upon the stage of life. Like that illustrious states- man, he died in the Catholic faith, of which he had for some time past been a zealous promoter.
" Two days previous to this event his sick chamber presented an interesting spectacle. Doc- tor J. W. Francis, his friend and kind physician since the old operatic days, and to whom the aged poet had in gratitude addressed a parting ode on the day preceding, perceiving symptoms of ap- proaching dissolution, notified his numerous friends of the change in the venerable patient. It was one of those afternoons of waning summer, when the mellow sunset foretells approaching autumn. The old poet's magnificent head lay upon a sea of
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pillows, and the conscious eye still shed its beams of regard upon all around him. Besides several of his countrymen, were assembled some remnants of the old Italian troupe, who knelt for a farewell blessing around the pallet of their expiring bard ; among them might be seen the fine head of Fornasari and Signor Bagioli's benevolent coun- tenance. All wept as the patriarch bade them an affectionate and earnest farewell, and implored a blessing on their common country. The doctor, watching the flickerings of the life-torch, stood at the head of the couch, and a group of fearful women at the foot, completed a scene not unlike the portraiture we have all seen of the last hours of Napoleon."
Vicissitudes had made Da Ponte a great ob- server of life ; his intimate associations with Mozart, the countenance and encouragement he received from Joseph II., his acquaintance with Metastasio, the lyric poet and writer of operas and dramas in Italy, are prominent among the events of his earlier career, at which time he established his reputation as a melo-dramatist.
The opportunities which presented themselves to me of obtaining circumstantial facts concerning Mozart from the personal knowledge of Da Ponte, were not so frequent as desirable, but the incidents which Da Ponte gave were all of a most agree- able character. His accounts strengthened the
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reports of the ardent, nay, almost impetuous energy and industry of Mozart ; his promptness in decision, and his adventurous intellect. The story of Don Juan had indeed become familiar in a thousand ways ; Mozart determined to cast the opera exclusively as serious, and had well advanced in the work. Da Ponte assured me, that he re- monstrated and urged the expediency on the great composer of the introduction of the vis comica, in order to accomplish a greater success, and pre- pared the rôle with Batti, batti, Là ci darem, &c. How far he influenced Mozart in the composition, Nozze de Figaro, I am unprepared to say ; but the Libretto of these two works, from the testimony of the best judges, enhanced the renown already widely recognized of Da Ponte as a dominant genius in his profession, enabling melody to pos- sess its fullest expression in facile language, and with delicacy, simplicity, and exquisite tenderness.
It will ever remain a difficulty to know why so long a time elapsed ere those master works, Don Giovanni and Nozze de Figaro, were introduced to the admiration of the English public. National prejudice had indeed its influence, and the legiti- mate drama was disposed to ward off an opponent whose powers when once understood were sure to rival, in due season, all that the dramatic world could summon in its own behalf. Dr. Arne had, almost a century before, given a foretaste of the
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Italian style in his music to Tom Thumb ; and his celebrated opera of Artaxerxes, about 1760, had gained the author a vast accession of fame, and had delighted the British nation ; yet Mozart's Don Giovanni only saw the light of the stage in London, in 1817. The mock-bravuras and the travesties of Cherry, the patriotic songs of Dibdin in the times of England's great struggle, &c., may perhaps be considered as among the causes which retarded the day when the national taste was to be refined by this pure source of intellectual pleasure. Such, I think, was in part Da Ponte's views ; but he was never very ardent in his praises of the Eng- lish as a musical people. Yet it is to be conceded, that a foretaste of that gratification which followed the advent of Rossini, had been enjoyed in the vocal displays of Storace, Billington, and John Braham.
It was easy to perceive, after a short interview with Da Ponte, that his capacious intellect was filled with bookish wisdom. He had recitals at command for the diversity of society in which he chanced to be. He loved his beautiful Italy, and was prolific in praise of her authors. He extolled Caldani and Scarpa, and had many charming stories concerning the great illustrator of sound and morbid anatomy, Morgagni. Da Ponte at- tended the last course of instruction imparted by that pre-eminent philosopher, who had then been
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professor some sixty years. On that memorable occasion, when Morgagni was to meet his class for the last time, he summoned his cara sposa, Sig- nora Morgagni, a lady of noble family, and his surviving children, some ten out of fifteen whom she had blessed him with, and forming with them a group around his person, he pronounced a bene- diction on the University and on his class, and then appealed to his venerable wife for the fidelity of his domestic life, and to his children as the tokens of her love and affection. He was now in his ninetieth year. Da Ponte said he was never more in earnest, never more powerful, never more eloquent. Padua then lost the brightest teacher of anatomical knowledge the world possessed, and the University a name in its possession high above all others, which commanded the admiration of the cultivators of real science wherever the dignity and utility of medicine were appreciated. I am aware I have trespassed beyond my proper limits in this notice, but it was difficult to do otherwise. Perhaps at this very day, casting a look over the many schools of medicine established in this land, there is not an individual oftener mentioned in the courses of practical instruction, on certain branches, than Morgagni, though now dead more than two generations. I wished to draw a moral from the story, cheering to the devoted student in his severe toils to qualify him for medical responsibility.
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Morgagni, besides great professional acquisitions, was a master of elegant literature, an antiquarian of research, a proficient in historical lorc. The learned associations of every order in Europe en- rolled him as a member. His numerous writings, full of original discoveries, are compressed in five huge folios, and are consulted as a treasury of es- tablished facts on a thousand subjects. To his responsible duties, involving life and death, he superadded for more than sixty years his univer- sity teachings, and died at ninety with his mental faculties entire. How was the miracle wrought ? In the presence of herculean labors, if ennui ever dared to approach, an Italian lyric of Metastasio was all-sufficient for relief. By proper frugality he secured property ; by a regular life he preserved health ; by system and devotion he sccured his immortal renown.
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