A Liberal and sensible correspondent of the _Harmonicon_ writes thus:
Mrs. Wood is not the first of our countrywomen who has attained the same
rank; the names of Billington, Cecilia Davies (called _Inglesina_,) and in
remoter times, that of Anastasia Robinson, (afterwards Countess of
Peterborough,) will immediately occur to the musical reader; but, with the
exception of the latter, who lived at a time when the Italian opera in
England was in its infancy, Mrs. Wood is, if I mistake not, the first
Englishwoman who has achieved that distinction without a certificate of
character from Italy. Even Billington was not thought worthy of our opera
stage until she had delighted the audiences of San Carlo, the Scala, and
the Fenice. Mrs. Wood, on the other hand, is our own, and wholly our own;
she has not basked in the suns of Naples, nor breathed the musical
atmosphere of Venice or Milan; yet I, who am an old stager, like Iago,
"nothing if not critical," and have heard every _prima donna_ from
Billington down to this present writing, have seldom uttered any _brava_
with more unction than when listening to Mrs. Wood's _Angelina_ and
_Ottavia_.
My intent is to hail Mrs. Wood's appearance and success at the opera as an
_auspicium melioris ævi_, as the dawn of a coming day, when the staple
commodity of our Italian opera shall be furnished by our own island,
instead of being imported from a country which, I boldly assert, does not
produce either superior voices, or better educated musicians than our
own--nay, so well educated. Has Italy ever furnished us with such a tenor
singer as Braham; the Braham that I am, _per mia disgrazia_, qualified, by
age, to remember; the Braham of 1801? Has Italy ever sent us a _prima
donna_, considered as a singer only, like Billington? On the contrary, do
we not, in gauging our progressive musical importations, subject them to
immediate comparison with Billington and Braham? And who, except Catalani
and Fodor, Siboni and Donzelli, would bear that comparison? The French,
the Germans, cultivate assiduously native talent, and we import, now a
Fodor, and now a Sontag; we English alone persist in the sapient policy of
making the exclusion of the native artist from the highest point to which
his ambition could be directed, the rule; and his admission, the exception
which the grammarians say (though my grammar-master never could drive it
into my head why) proves the rule.
But I shall be told that few of our native artists can speak the Italian
language, or sing Italian music, and more especially recitative. My answer
is, let them once know that the mere circumstance of their being English
born does not shut the stage-door of the King's Theatre against them, all
will look up to its boards as the goal of their ambition, and the study of
Italian and recitative will form an important part of every singer's
education. Another common objection is, that we cannot acquire the purity
of pronunciation required by the refined audience of the King's Theatre. I
trust it is no heresy to say that I am somewhat sceptical as to the powers
of euphoniacal criticism which that audience possesses. If one in ten,
even of the box company, can really distinguish the true _bocca romana_
from the patois of the Venetian gondolieri or the Neapolitan lazzaroni, it
is, I am persuaded, as much as the truth will justify. In fact it is not
the audience that is so critical: it is the associated band of foreign
parasites who attach themselves to our aristocracy with the tenacity of
leeches, as purveyors _des menus plaisirs_, and whose interests are
vitally concerned in excluding English talent, and negotiating the
concerns of foreign artists, that raise the cry of "pronunciation." It is
these gentry who, in phrase that a Tuscan would spurn at, and in a brogue
from which a Roman, ear would be averted with disgust, assure our
fashionable opera goers that we poor Englishers cannot learn to pronounce
Italian.
But, after all, do we, by employing only _foreigners_--for we are not
particular, so they be foreigners, as to whether they were born and bred
beyond, or on this side the Alps,--do we, by employing only foreigners,
secure this essential purity of Italian pronunciation? Will these
super-delicate critics favour a plain man, by informing me which of the
great singers I have heard for the last thirty years I should select as my
canon of true Italian pronunciation--Catalani and Camporese, or Garcia the
Spaniard and Begrez the Fleming? There is not more difference between the
English, whether we look to phraseology or pronunciation, of a Londoner, a
Gloucestershire man, or a Northumbrian, than there is between the Italian
of a Tuscan, a Venetian and a Neapolitan. Have the stage lamps of Drury
Lane or Covent Garden the virtue of curing the Northumbrian's burr, or
correcting the Gloucestershireman's invincible abhorrence of _h_'s and
_w_'s? If not, can we expect that even the theatres of Rome and Florence
will neutralize at once the provincial accent of a Neapolitan or Venetian?
Was it in Morelli, the stable-boy, or Banti, the street
ballad-singer, that the beau ideal of pure Italian pronunciation was to be
recognised?
But, to be serious. I will venture to affirm that, on this side the Alps,
there is no country in Europe whose natives have so little to learn, or to
unlearn, in acquiring a good Italian pronunciation, as the English. We
have neither the gutturals of the German and the Spaniard, nor the mute
vowels and nasal _n_'s of the French to get rid of; there is scarcely a
sound in the Italian language which we are not in the daily habit of
uttering, and nearly our whole task would be confined to the learning that
certain conventional alphabetical symbols, which represent one sound in
English, represent another in Italian. Away, then, with the jargonal
pretence that English singers cannot acquire a good and pure Italian
pronunciation; make it worth their while, open the stage-doors of the
King's Theatre to the native artist, and you will soon find talent more
than enough.
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