After a few months of rest [after the South American tour], I resolved
to get together a new company, selecting those actors and actresses
who were best suited to my repertory. The excellent Isolina Piamonti
was my leading lady; and my brother Alessandro, an experienced,
conscientious, and versatile artist, supported me. An Italian
theatrical speculator proposed to me a tour in North America, to
include the chief cities of the United States, and although I
hesitated not a little on account of the ignorance of the Italian
language prevailing in that country, I accepted, influenced somewhat
by my desire to visit a region which was wholly unknown to me.
Previous to crossing the ocean I had several months before me, and
these served me to get my company in training.
My first impressions of New York were most favourable. Whether it was
the benefit of a more vivifying atmosphere, or the comfort of the
national life, or whether it was admiration for that busy,
industrious, work-loving people, or the thousands of beautiful women
whom I saw in the streets, free and proud in carriage, and healthy and
lively in aspect, or whether it was the thought that these citizens
were the great-grandchildren of those high-souled men who had known
how to win with their blood the independence of their country, I felt
as if I had been born again to a new existence. My lungs swelled more
freely as I breathed the air impregnated with so much vigour and
movement, and so much liberty, and I could fancy that I had come back
to my life of a youth of twenty, and was treading the streets of
republican Rome. With a long breath of satisfaction I said to myself:
"Ah, here is life!" Within a few days my energy was redoubled. A
lively desire of movement, not a usual thing with me, had taken
possession of me in spite of myself. Without asking myself why, I
kept going here and there, up and down, to see everything, to gain
information; and when I returned to my rooms in the evening, I could
have set out again to walk still more. This taught me why Americans
are so unwearied and full of business. Unfortunately I have never
mastered English sufficiently to converse in that tongue; had I
possessed that privilege, perhaps my stay in North America would not
have been so short, and perhaps I might have figured on the English
stage. What an enjoyment it would have been to me to play Shakespeare
in English! But I have never had the privilege of the gift of
tongues, and I had to content myself with my own Italian, which is
understood by but few in America. This, however, mattered little;
they understood me all the same, or, to put it better, they caught by
intuition my ideas and my sentiments.
My first appearance was in "Othello." The public received a strong
impression, without discussing whether or not the means which I used
to cause it were acceptable, and without forming a clear conception of
my interpretation of that character, or pronouncing openly upon its
form. The same people who had heard it the first night returned on
the second, on the third, and even on the fourth, to make up their
minds whether the emotions they experienced resulted from the novelty
of my interpretation, or whether in fact it was the true sentiment of
Othello's passions which was transmitted to them--in short, whether it
was a mystification or a revelation. By degrees the public became
convinced that those excesses of jealousy and fury were appropriate to
the son of the desert, and that one of Southern blood must be much
better qualified to interpret them than a Northerner. The judgment
was discussed, criticised, disputed; but in the end the verdict was
overwhelmingly in my favour. When the American has once said "Yes,"
he never weakens; he will always preserve for you the same esteem,
sympathy, and affection. After New York I travelled through a number
of American cities--Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, Washington,
and Boston, which is rightly styled the Athens of America, for there
artistic taste is most refined. In Boston I had the good fortune to
become intimately acquainted with the illustrious poet, Longfellow,
who talked to me in the pure Tuscan. I saw, too, other smaller
cities, and then I appeared again in New York, where the favour of the
public was confirmed, not only for me, but also for the artists of my
company, and especially for Isolina Piamonti, who received no
uncertain marks of esteem and consideration. We then proceeded to
Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Toledo, and that pleasant
city, Detroit, continuing to Chicago, and finally to New Orleans.