With the name of Malibran there is associated an interest, alike
personal and artistic, rarely equaled and certainly unsurpassed among
the traditions which make the records of the lyric stage so fascinating.
Daring originality stamped her life as a woman, her career as an artist,
and the brightness with which her star shone through a brief and stormy
history had something akin in it to the dazzling but capricious passage
of a meteor. If Pasta was the Siddons of the lyric drama, unapproachable
in its more severe and tragic phases, Malibran represented its Garrick.
Brilliant, creative, and versatile, she sang equally well in all styles
of music, and no strain on her resources seemed to overtax the power
of an artistic imagination which delighted in vanquishing obstacles and
transforming native defects into new beauties, an attribute of genius
which she shared in equal degree with Pasta, though it took on a
different manifestation.
This great singer belonged to a Spanish family of musicians, who have
been well characterized as "representative artists, whose power, genius,
and originality have impressed a permanent trace on the record of the
methods of vocal execution and ornament." Her father, Manuel Vicente
Garcia, at the age of seventeen, was already well known as composer,
singer, actor, and conductor. His pieces, short comic operas, had a
great popularity in Spain, and were not only bright and inventive,
but marked by thorough musical workmanship. A month after he made his
_début_ in Paris, in 1811, he had become the chief singer, and sang
for three years under the operatic _regime_ which shared the general
splendor of Napoleon's court. He was afterward appointed first tenor at
Naples by King Joachim Munit, and there produced his opera of "Califo di
Bagdad," which met with great success. It was here that the child Maria,
then only five years old, made her first public appearance in one of
Paer's operas, and here that she received her first lessons in music
from M. Panseron and the composer Hérold. When Garcia quitted Italy
in 1816, he sang with Catalani in Paris, but, as that jealous artist
admitted no bright star near her own, Garcia soon left the troupe, and
went to London in the spring of 1818. He oscillated between the two
countries for several years, and was the first brilliant exponent of the
Rossinian music in two great capitals, as his training and method were
peculiarly fitted to this school. The indomitable energy and ambition
which he transmitted to his daughters, who were to become such
distinguished ornaments of the stage, were not contented with making
their possessor a great executant, for he continued to produce operas,
several of which were put on the stage in Paris with notable success.
Garcia's name as a teacher commenced about the year 1823 to overshadow
his reputation as a singer. In the one he had rivals, in the other he
was peerless. His school of singing quickly became famous, though he
continued to appear on the stage, and to pour forth operas of more than
average merit.
The education of his daughter Maria, born at Paris, March 24, 1808, had
always been a matter of paternal solicitude. A delicate, sensitive, and
willful child, she had been so humored and petted at the convent-school
of Hammersmith, where she was first placed, that she developed a caprice
and a recklessness which made her return to the house of her stern and
imperious father doubly painful, lier experience was a severe one, and
Manuel Garcia was more pitiless to his daughter than to other pupils.
Already at this period Maria spoke with ease Spanish, Italian, French,
and English, to which she afterward added German. The Garcia household
was a strange one. The Spanish musician was a tyrant in his home, and
a savage temper, which had but few streaks of tenderness, frequently
vented itself in blows and brutality, in spite of the remarkable musical
facility with which Maria appropriated teaching, and the brilliant gifts
which would have flattered the pride and softened the sympathies of
a more gentle and complacent parent. The young girl, in spite of
her prodigious instinct for art and her splendid intelligence, had a
peculiarly intractable organ. The lower notes of the voice were very
imperfect, the upper tones thin, disagreeable, and hard, the middle
veiled, and her intonation so doubtful that it almost indicated an
imperfect ear. She would sometimes sing so badly that her father would
quit the piano precipitately and retreat to the farthest corner of the
house with his fingers thrust into his ears. But Garcia was resolved
that his daughter should become what Nature seemingly had resolved she
should not be, a great vocalist, and he bent all the energies of his
harsh and imperious temper to further this result. "One evening I
studied a duet with Maria," says the Countess Merlin, "in which Garcia
had written a passage, and he desired her to execute it. She tried, but
became discouraged, and said, 'I can not.' In an instant the Andalu-sian
blood of her father rose. He fixed his flashing eyes upon her: 'What
did you say?' Maria looked at him, trembled, and, clasping her hands,
murmured in a stifled voice, 'I will do it, papa;' and she executed the
passage perfectly. She told me afterward that she could not conceive how
she did it. 'Papa's glance,' added she, 'has such an influence upon
me that I am sure it would make me fling myself from the roof into the
street without doing myself any harm.'"
Maria Felicia Garcia was a wayward and willful child, but so generous
and placable that her fierce outbursts of rage were followed by the
most fascinating and winning contrition. Irresistibly charming, frank,
fearless, and original, she gave promise, even in her early youth, of
the remarkable qualities which afterward bestowed such a unique and
brilliant _cachet_ on her genius as an artist and her character as a
woman. Her father, with all his harshness, understood her truly, for
she inherited both her faults and her gifts from himself. "Her proud and
stubborn spirit requires an iron hand to control it," he said; "Maria
can never become great except at the price of much suffering." By the
time she had reached the age of fifteen her voice had greatly improved.
Her chest-notes had gained greatly in power, richness, and depth, though
the higher register of the vocal organ still remained crude and veiled.
Fetis says that it was on account of the sudden indisposition of
Madame Pasta that the first public appearance of Maria in opera was
unexpectedly made, but Lord Mount Edgcumbe and the impressario Ebers
both tell a different story. The former relates in his "Reminiscences"
that, shortly after the repair of the King's Theatre, "the great
favorite Pasta arrived for a limited number of nights. About the same
time Konzi fell ill and totally lost her voice, so that she was obliged
to throw up her engagement and return to Italy. Mme. Vestris having
seceded, and Caradori being for some time unable to perform, it became
necessary to engage a young singer, the daughter of the tenor Garcia,
who had sung here for several seasons.... Her extreme youth, her
prettiness, her pleasing voice, and sprightly, easy action as _Rosina_
in 'Il Barbiere,' in which part she made her _début_, gained her general
favor." Chor-ley recalls the impression she made on him at this time in
more precise and emphatic terms: "From the first hour when Maria Garcia
appeared on the stage, first in 'Il Barbiere' and subsequently in
'Il Crociato,' it was evident that a new artist, as original as
extraordinary, was come--one by nature fairly endowed, not merely with
physical powers, but also with that inventive, energetic, rapid genius,
before which obstacles become as nothing, and by the aid of which the
sharpest contradictions become reconciled." She made her _début_ on June
7, 1825, and was immediately engaged for the remaining six weeks of
the season at five hundred pounds. Her first success was followed by a
second in Meyerber's 'Il Crociato,' in which she sang with Velluti, the
last of that extraordinary _genre_ of artists, the male sopranos. Garcia
wrote several arias for her voice, which were interpolated in the opera,
much to Manager Ayrton's disgust, but much also to the young singer's
advantage, for the father knew every defect and every beauty of his
daughter's voice.
If her father was ambitious and daring, Maria was so likewise. She had
to sing with Velluti a duet in Zingarelli's "Romeo e Giulietta," and in
the morning they rehearsed it together, Velluti reserving his fioriture
for the evening, lest the young _débutante_ should endeavor to imitate
his ornaments. In the evening he sang his solo part, embroidering it
with the most florid decorations, and finishing with a new and beautiful
cadenza, which astonished and charmed the audience; Maria seized the
phrases, to which she imparted an additional grace, and crowned her
triumph with an audacious and superb improvisation. Thunders of applause
greeted her, and while trembling with excitement she felt her arm
grasped by a hand of iron. "Briccona!" hissed a voice in her ear, as
Velluti glared on her, gnashing his teeth with rage. After performing
in London, she appeared in the autumn with her father at the Manchester,
York, and Liverpool Festivals, where she sang some of the most difficult
pieces from the "Messiah" and the "Creation." Some said that she failed,
others that she sang with a degree of mingled brilliancy, delicacy, and
sweetness that drew down a storm of applause.