From Paris Mlle. Cruvelli went to London, where she sang an engagement
at the Royal Italian Opera, making her opening appearance as
_Desdemona_, in the same cast with Tamburini and Ronconi. Her terms
during the season were two hundred and fifty pounds a night. Her other
parts were _Leonora_ ("Fidelio"), and _Donna Anna_ ("Don Giovanni"), and
the performances were estimated by the most competent judges to be on
a plan of artistic excellence not surpassed, and rarely equaled, in
operatic annals. Mlle. Cruvelli revived the Parisian excitement of the
previous season by her appearance at the Grand Opéra, as _Alice_ in
"Robert le Diable." The audience was a most brilliant one, and their
reception of the artist was one of the most prolonged and enthusiastic
applause. She continued to sing in Paris during the summer months and
early autumn, and was the reigning goddess of the stage. All Paris was
looking forward to the production of "Les Huguenots" in October with a
great flutter of expectation, when Sophie suddenly disappeared from the
public view and knowledge. The expected night of the production of "Les
Huguenots" on a scale of almost unequaled magnificence arrived, and
still the representative of _Valentine_ could not be found. Sophie had
treated the public in a similar fashion more than once before, and
it may be fancied that the Parisians were in a state of furious
indignation. Great surprise was felt that she should have forfeited so
profitable an engagement--four thousand pounds for the season, with
the obligation of singing only two nights a week. She had abandoned
everything, injured her manager, M. Fould, and insulted the public for
the gratification of a whim. No adequate reason could be guessed at for
such eccentricity, not even the excuse of an _affaire de coeur_, which
would go further in the minds of Frenchmen than any other justification
of capricious courses. Her furniture and the money at her banker's were
seized as security for the forfeit of four thousand pounds stipulated by
her contract in case of breach of engagement, and her private papers and
letters were opened and read.
About a month after her sudden flight, M. Fould received a letter from
the errant _diva_, in which she demanded permission to return and
fill her contract. M. Fould consented, and accepted her plea of "a
misunderstanding," but the public were not so easily placated, and
when she appeared on the stage as _Valentine_ the audience hissed her
violently. Sophie was not a whit daunted, but, confident in her power to
charm, put all the fullness of her powers into her performance, and she
soon had the satisfaction of learning by the enthusiasm of the plaudits
that the Parisians had forgiven their favorite.
Sophie Cruvelli continued on the stage till 1855, and, although her
faults of violence and exaggeration continued to call out severe
criticism, she disarmed even the attacks of her enemies by the
unquestionable vigor of her genius as well as by the magnificence of a
voice which had never been surpassed in native excellence, though many
had been far greater in the art of vocalization. Her last performance,
and perhaps one of the grandest efforts of her life, was the character
of _Helene_ in Verdi's "Les Vêpres Siciliennes," the active principal
parts having been taken by Bonnehée, Gueymard, and Obin. The production
of the work was on a splendid scale, and the opera a great success. "The
audience was electrified by the tones of her magnificent voice, which
realized with equal effect those high inspirations that demand passion,
force, and impulse, and those tender passages that require delicacy,
taste, and a thorough knowledge of the art of singing. No one could
reproach Mlle. Cruvelli with exaggeration, so well did she know how
to restrain her ardent nature." "Cruvelli is the Rachel of the Grand
Opéra!" exclaimed a French critic. From these estimates it may be
supposed that, just as she was on the eve of passing out of the
profession in which she had already achieved such a splendid place at
the age of twenty-five, a great future, to which hardly any limits could
be set, was opening the most fascinating inducements to her. The faults
which had marred the full blaze of her genius had begun to be mellowed
and softened by experience, and there was scarcely any pitch of artistic
greatness to which she might not aspire.
Rumors of her approaching marriage had already begun to circulate, and
it soon became known that Sophie Cruvelli was about to quit the stage.
On January 5, 1856, she married Baron Vigier, a wealthy young Parisian,
the son of Count Vigier, whose father had endowed the city of Paris with
the immense bathing establishments on the Seine which bear his name,
and who, in the time of the Citizen King, was a member of the Chamber of
Deputies, and afterward a peer of France. Mme. Vigier resides with her
husband in their splendid mansion at Nice, and, though she has sung on
many occasions in the salons of the fashionable world and for charity,
she has been steadfast in her retirement from professional life. She
has composed many songs, and even some piano-forte works, though her
compositions are as unique and defiant of rules as was her eccentric
life.
Sophie Cruvelli was only eight years on the operatic stage, but during
that period she impressed herself on the world as one of the great
singers not only of her own age, but of any age; yet far greater in her
possibilities than in her attainment. She had by no means reached
the zenith of her professional ability when she suddenly retired into
private life. There have been many singers who have filled a more
active and varied place in the operatic world; never one who was more
munificently endowed with the diverse gifts which enter into the highest
power for lyric drama. She had queenly beauty of face and form, the most
vehement dramatic passion, a voice alike powerful, sweet, and flexible,
and an energy of temperament which scorned difficulties. Had her
operatic career extended itself to the time, surely foreshadowed in her
last performances, when a finer art should have subdued her grand gifts
into that symmetry and correlation so essential to the best attainment,
it can hardly be questioned that her name would not have been surpassed,
perhaps not equaled, in lyric annals. A star of the first magnitude was
quenched when the passion of love subdued her professional ambition.
Sophie Cruvelli, though her artistic life was far briefer than those
of other great singers, has been deemed worthy of a place among these
sketches, as an example of what may be called the supreme endowment of
nature in the gifts of dramatic song.