Mme. Malibran's Italian experiences were in the highest sense gratifying
alike to her pride as a great artist and to her love of admiration as
a woman. Her popularity became a mania which infected all classes, and
her appearance on the streets was the signal for the most fervid shouts
of enthusiasm from the populace. For two years she alternated between
London and the sunny lands where she had become such an idol. She had
to struggle in Milan against the indelible impress made by Mme. Pasta,
whose admirers entertained an almost fanatical regard for her memory as
the greatest of lyric artists; but when Malibran appeared as _Norma_,
a part written by Bellini expressly for Pasta, she was proclaimed _la
cantante per eccelenza_. A medal, executed by the distinguished sculptor
Valerio Nesti, was struck in her honor. Her generosity of nature was
signally instanced during these golden Italian days in many acts of
beneficence, of which the following are instances: During her stay at
Sinigaglia in the summer of 1834, she heard an exquisite voice
singing beneath the windows of her hotel. On looking out she saw a wan
beggar-girl dressed in rags. Discovering by investigation that it was a
case of genuine want, she placed the girl in a position where she could
receive an excellent musical education and have all her needs amply
supplied. On the eve of her departure from Naples, the last engagement
she ever sang in that city, Gallo, proprietor of the Teatro Emeronnitio,
came to entreat her to sing once at his establishment. He had a wife and
several children, and was a very worthy man, on the verge of bankruptcy.
"I will sing," answered she, "on one condition--that not a word is
said about remuneration." She chose the part of _Amina_; the house was
crammed, and the poor man was saved from ruin. A vast multitude followed
her home, with an enthusiasm which amounted almost to a frenzy, and the
grateful manager named his theatre the Teatro Garcia. On Ash-Wednesday,
March 13, 1835, Mme. Malibran bade the Neapolitans adieu--an eternal
adieu. Radiant with glory, and crowned with flowers, she was conducted
by the Neapolitans to the faubourgs amid the _éclat_ of _vivats_ and
acclamations.
The Neapolitans adored Malibran, and she loved to sing to these
susceptible lovers of the divine art. On one occasion when she was
suffering from a severe accident, she appeared with her arm in a sling
rather then disappoint her audience. During all her Italian seasons,
especially in Naples, where perfection of climate and delightful scenery
combine to stimulate the animal spirits, she pursued the same wild
and reckless course which had so often threatened to cut off her frail
tenure of life. A daring horsewoman and swimmer, she alternated these
exercises with fatiguing studies and incessant social pleasures. She
practiced music five or six hours a day, spent several hours in violent
exercise, and in the evenings not engaged at the theatre would go
to parties, where she amused herself and her friends in a thousand
different ways--making caricatures, doggerel verses, riddles,
conundrums, _bouts-rimes_, dancing, jesting, laughing, and singing. Full
of exhaustless vivacity, she seemed more and more to disdain rest as her
physical powers grew weaker. The enthusiasm with which she was received
and followed everywhere was in itself a dangerous draught on her nervous
energies, which should have been husbanded, not lavishly wasted. One
night at Milan she was deluged with bouquets of which the leaves were of
gold and silver, and recalled by the frantic acclamations of her hearers
twenty times, at the close of which she fainted on the stage. It was
during this engagement at Milan that she heard of the death of the young
composer, Vincentio Bellini, on September 23, 1835, and she set on
foot a subscription for a tribute to his memory, leading the list with
four-hundred francs. It was a premonition of her own departure from the
world of art which she had so splendidly adorned, for exactly a year
from that day she breathed her last sigh.
Her arrival in Venice during this last triumphant tour of her life
was the occasion for an ovation not less flattering than those she had
received elsewhere. As her gondola entered the Grand Canal, she was
welcomed with a deafening _fanfare_ of trumpets, the crash of musical
bands, and the shouts of a vast multitude. It was as if some great
general had just returned from victories in the field, which had saved a
state. Mali-bran was frightened at this enthusiasm, and took refuge in a
church, which speedily became choke-full of people, and a passage had
to be opened for her exit to her hotel. Whenever she appeared, the
multitude so embarrassed her that a way had to be made by the gendarmes,
and her gondola was always pursued by a _cortege_ of other gondolas,
that crowded in her wake. When she departed, the city presented her with
a magnificent diamond and ruby diadem.
In March, 1835, the divorce which she had long been seeking was granted
by a French tribunal, and ten months later, at the expiration of the
limit fixed by French law, she married M. De Bériot, March 29, 1836,
thus legalizing the birth of their son, Wilfred de Bériot, who, with
one daughter, that did not live, had been the fruit of their passionate
attachment. On the day of her marriage she distributed a thousand francs
among the poor, and her friends showered costly gifts on her, among them
being an agraffe of pearls from the Queen of France.
During the season of 1835 Mme. Malibran appeared for Mr. Bunn at
Drury Lane and Covent Garden in twenty-six performances, for which she
received £3,463. Among other operas she appeared in Balfe's new work,
"The Maid of Artois," which, in spite of its beautiful melody, has never
kept its hold on the stage. Her _Leonora_ in Beethoven's "Fidelio"
was considered by many the peer of Mme. Schrôder-Devrient's grand
performance. Her labors during this season were gigantic. She would rise
at 5 a.m., and practice for several hours, rehearsing before a mirror
and inventing attitudes. It was in this way that she conceived the
"stage-business" which produced such an electric impression in "Gli
Orazi," when the news of her lover's death is announced to the heroine.
"While the rehearsals of 'The Maid of Artois' were going on from day to
day--and Mme. Malibran's rehearsals were not so many hours of sauntering
indifference--she would, immediately after they were finished, dart
to one or two concerts, and perhaps conclude the day by singing at an
evening party. She pursued the same course during her performance of
that arduous character," thus wrote one of the critics of the time, for
the interest which Malibran excited was so great that the public loved
to hear of all the details of her remarkable career.
Shortly after her marriage in the spring of 1836, Mme. de Bériot was
thrown from her horse while attending a hunting-party in England,
and sustained serious internal injury, which she neglected to provide
against by medical treatment, concealing it even from her husband.
Indeed, she sang on the same evening, and her prodigious facility in
_tours de force_ was the subject of special comment, for she seemed
spurred to outdo herself from consciousness of physical weakness. When
she returned to England again in the following September, her failing
health was painfully apparent to all. Yet her unconquerable energy
struggled against her sufferings, and she would permit herself
no relaxation. In vain her husband and her good friend Lablachc
remonstrated. A hectic, feverish excitement pervaded all her actions.
She was engaged to sing at the Manchester Musical Festival, and at the
rehearsals she would laugh and cry hysterically by turns.
At the first performance of the festival in the morning, she was carried
out of her dressing-room in a swoon, but the dying singer was bent on
doing what she considered her duty. She returned and delivered the air
of _Abraham_ by Cimarosa. Her thrilling tones and profound dejection
made a deep impression on the audience. The next day she rallied from
her sick-bed and insisted on being carried to the festival building,
where she was to sing a duet with Mme. Caradori-Allen. This was the
dying song of the swan, and it is recorded that her last effort was one
of the finest of her life. The assembly, entranced by the genius and
skill of the singer, forgot her precarious condition and demanded a
repetition. Malibran again sang with all the passionate fire of her
nature, and her wonderful voice died away in a prolonged shake on her
very topmost note. It was her last note on earth, for she was carried
thence to her deathbed.
Her sufferings were terrible. Convulsions and fainting-fits followed
each other in swift succession, and it was evident that her end was
near. The news of her fatal illness excited the deepest sympathy and
sorrow throughout England and France, and bulletins of her condition
were issued every day. Pending the arrival of her own physician, Dr.
Belluomini, from London, she had been bled while in a fainting-fit by
two local practitioners. When she recovered her senses, she said, "I am
a slain woman, for they have bled me!" She died on September 23, 1836,
and De Bériot's name was the last word that parted her pallid lips.
The death of this great and idolized singer produced a painful shock
throughout Europe, and was regarded as a public calamity, for she had
been as much admired and beloved as a woman as she was worshiped as
an artist. Her remains, first interred in Manchester, were afterward
removed by her husband to Brussels, where he raised a circular memorial
chapel to her memory at Lacken. Her statue, chiseled in white marble by
Geefs, represents her as _Norma_, and stands in the center, faintly lit
by a single sunbeam admitted from a dome, and surrounded by masses of
shadow. "It appears," says the Countess de Merlin, "like a fantastic
thought, the dream of a poet."
Maria Malibran was unquestionably one of the most gifted and remarkable
women who ever adorned the lyric stage. The charm of her singing
consisted in the peculiarity of the timbre and the remarkable range of
her voice, in her excitable temperament, which prompted her to execute
the most audacious improvisations, and in her strong musical feeling,
which kept her improvisations within the laws of good taste. Her voice,
a mezzo-soprano, with a high soprano range superadded by incessant work
and training, was in its middle register very defective, a fault which
she concealed by her profound musical knowledge and technical skill.
It was her mind that helped to enslave her hearers; for without mental
originality and a distinct sort of creative force her defective voice
would have failed to charm, where in fact it did provoke raptures. She
was, in the exact sense of a much-abused adjective, a phenomenal singer,
and it is the misfortune of the present generation that she died too
young for them to hear.