Mme. Viardot's name is, perhaps, more closely associated with the music
of Meyerbeer than that of any other composer. Her _Alice_ in "Robert le
Diable," her _Valentine_ in "Les Huguenots," added fresh luster to her
fame. In the latter character no representative of opera, in spite of
the long bead-roll of eminent names interwoven with the record of this
musical work, is worthy to be compared with her. This part was for years
regarded as standing to her what _Medea_ was to Pasta, _Norma_ to Grisi,
_Fidelio_ to Malibran and Schröder-Devrient, and it was only when she
herself made a loftier flight as _Fides_ in "Le Prophète" that this
special connection of the part with the _artist_ ceased. Her genius
always found a more ardent sympathy with the higher forms of music. "The
florid graces and embellishments of the modern Italian school," says a
capable judge, "though mastered by her with perfect ease, do not appear
to be consonant with her genius. So great an artist must necessarily be
a perfect mistress of all styles of singing, but her intellect evidently
inclines her to the severer and loftier school." She was admitted to be
a "woman of genius, peculiar, inasmuch as it is universal."
Her English engagement at the Royal Italian Opera, in 1848, began with
the performance of _Amina_ in "La Sonnambula," and created a great
sensation, for she was about to contest the suffrages of the public with
a group of the foremost singers of the world, among whom were Grisi,
Alboni, and Persiani. Mme. Viardot's nervousness was apparent to all.
"She proved herself equal to Malibran," says a writer in the "Musical
World," speaking of this performance; "there was the same passionate
fervor, the same absorbing depth of feeling; we heard the same tones
whose naturalness and pathos stole into our very heart of hearts; we saw
the same abstraction, the same abandonment, the same rapturous awakening
to joy, to love, and to devotion. Such novel and extraordinary passages,
such daring nights into the region of fioriture, together with chromatic
runs ascending and descending, embracing the three registers of the
soprano, mezzo-soprano, and contralto, we have not heard since the days
of Malibran." Another critic made an accurate gauge of her peculiar
greatness in saying: "Mme. Viardot's voice grows unconsciously upon you,
until at last you are blind to its imperfections. The voice penetrates
to the heart by its sympathetic tones, and you forget everything in it
but its touching and affecting quality. You care little or nothing for
the mechanism, or rather, for the weakness of the organ. You are no
longer a critic, but spellbound by the hand of genius, moved by the
sway of enthusiasm that comes from the soul, abashed in the presence of
intellect."
The most memorable event of this distinguished artist's life was her
performance, in 1849, of the character of _Fides_ in "Le Prophète." No
operatic creation ever made a greater sensation in Paris. Meyerbeer had
kept it in his portfolio for years, awaiting the time when Mme. Viardot
should be ready to interpret it, and many changes had been made from
time to time at the suggestion of the great singer, who united to her
executive skill an intellect of the first rank, and a musical knowledge
second to that of few composers. At the very last moment it is said that
one or more of the acts were entirely reconstructed, at the wish of the
representative of _Fides_, whose dramatic instincts were as unerring as
her musical judgment. No performance since that of Viardot, though the
most eminent singers have essayed the part, has equaled the first ideal
set by her creation from its possibilities.
In this opera the principal interest pivots on the _mother_. The
sensuous, sentimental, or malignant phases of love are replaced by
the purest maternal devotion. It was left for Mme. Viardot to add an
absolutely new type to the gallery of portraits on the lyric stage. We
are told by a competent critic, whose enthusiasm in the study of
this great impersonation did not yet quite run away with his judicial
faculty: "Her remarkable power of self-identification with the character
set before her was, in this case, aided by person and voice. The mature
burgher woman in her quaint costume; the pale, tear-worn devotee,
searching from city to city for traces of the lost one, and struck
with a pious horror at finding him a tool in the hands of hypocritical
blasphemy, was till then a being entirely beyond the pale of the
ordinary prima donna's comprehension--one to the presentation of which
there must go as much simplicity as subtile art, as much of tenderness
as of force, as much renunciation of woman's ordinary coquetries as
of skill to impress all hearts by the picture of homely love, desolate
grief, and religious enthusiasm." M. Roger sang with Mme. Viardot in
Paris, but, when the opera was shortly afterward reproduced in London,
he was replaced by Signor Mario, "whose appearance in his coronation
robes reminded one of some bishop-saint in a picture by Van Ryek or
Durer, and who could bring to bear a play of feature without grimace,
into scenes of false fascination, far beyond the reach of the clever
French artist, M. Roger." The production of "Le Prophète" saved the
fortunes of the struggling new Italian Opera House, which had been
floundering in pecuniary embarrassments.
The last season of Mme. Viardot in England was in 1858, during which she
sang to enthusiastic audiences in many of her principal characters,
and also contributed to the public pleasure in concert and the great
provincial festivals. The tour in Poland, Germany, and Russia which
followed was marked by a series of splendid ovations and the eagerness
with which her society was sought by the most patrician circles in
Europe.
Her last public appearance in Paris was in 1862, and since that time
Mme. Viardot has occupied a professional chair at the Conservatoire. In
private life this great artist has always been loved and admired for
her brilliant mental accomplishments, her amiability, the suavity of her
manners, and her high principles, no less than she has been idolized by
the public for the splendor of her powers as musician and tragedienne.