As an artist who could transform natural faults into the rarest
beauties, who could make the world forgive the presence of other
deficiencies which could not thus be glorified by the presence of
genius, thought, and truth--as one who engraved deeper impressions
on the memory of her hearers than any other even in an age of great
singers--Mme. Pasta must be placed in the very front rank of art.
The way by which this gifted woman arrived at her throne was long and
toilsome. Nature had denied her the ninety-nine requisites of the
singer (according to the old Italian adage). Her voice at the origin was
limited, husky, and weak, without charm, without flexibility. Though her
countenance _spoke_, its features were cast in a coarse mold. Her figure
was ungraceful, her movements were awkward. No candidate for musical
sovereignty ever presented herself with what must have appeared a more
meager catalogue of pretensions at the outset of her career. What she
became let our sketch reveal.
She was the daughter of a Jewish family named Negri, born at Saronno,
near Milan, in the year 1798. The records of her childhood are slight,
and beyond the fact that she received her first musical lessons at the
Cathedral of Como and her latter training at the Milan Conservatory,
and that she essayed her feeble wings at second-rate Italian theatres
in subordinate parts for the first year, there is but little of
significance to relate. In 1816 she sang in the train of the haughty
and peerless Catalani at the Favart in Paris, but did not succeed
in attracting attention. But it happened that Ayrton, of the King's
Theatre, London, heard her sing at the house of Paer, the composer,
and liked her well enough to engage herself and husband at a moderate
salary. When Pasta's glimmering little light first shone in London,
Fodor and Camporese were in the full blaze of their reputation--both
brilliant singers, but destined to pale into insignificance afterward
before the intense splendor of Pasta's perfected genius. One of the
notices of the opening performance at the King's Theatre, when Mme.
Camporese sang the leading _rôle_ of Cimarosa's "Penelope," followed up
a lavish eulogium on the prima donna with the contemptuous remark, "Two
subordinate singers named Pasta and Mari came forward in the characters
of _Telamuco_ and _Arsi-noë_, but their musical talent does not require
minute delineation." There is every reason to believe that Pasta was
openly flouted both by the critics and the members of her own profession
during her first London experience, but a magnificent revenge was in
store for her. Among the parts she sang at this chrysalis period were
_Cherubino_ in the "Nozze di Figaro," _Servilia_ in "La Clemenza di
Tito," and the _rôle_ of the pretended shrew in Ferrari's "Il Shaglio
Fortunato." Mme. Pasta found herself at the end of the season a dire
failure. But she had the searching self-insight which stamps the highest
forms of genius, and she determined to correct her faults, and develop
her great but latent powers. Suddenly she disappeared from the view of
the operatic world, and buried herself in a retired Italian city,
where she studied with intelligent and tireless zeal under M. Scappa,
a _maestro_ noted for his power of kindling the material of genius.
Occasionally she tested herself in public. An English nobleman who heard
her casually at this time said: "Other singers find themselves endowed
with a voice and leave everything to chance. This woman leaves nothing
to chance, and her success is therefore certain." She subjected herself
to a course of severe and incessant study to subdue her voice. To
equalize it was impossible. There was a portion of the scale which
differed from the rest in quality, and remained to the last "under a
veil," to use the Italian term. Some of her notes were always out of
time, especially at the beginning of a performance, until the vocalizing
machinery became warmed and mellowed by passion and excitement. Out
of these uncouth and rebellious materials she had to compose her
instrument, and then to give it flexibility. Chor-ley, in speaking of
these difficulties, says: "The volubility and brilliancy, when acquired,
gained a character of their own from the resisting peculiarities of her
organ. There were a breadth, an expressiveness in her _roulades_, an
evenness and solidity in her shake, which imparted to every passage a
significance beyond the reach of more spontaneous singers." But,
after all, the true secret of her greatness was in the intellect and
imagination which lay behind the voice, and made every tone quiver with
dramatic sensibility.
The lyric Siddons of her age was now on the verge of making her real
_début_. When she reappeared in Venice, in 1819, she made a great
impression, which was strengthened by her subsequent performances
in Rome, Milan, and Trieste, during that and the following year. The
fastidious Parisians recognized her power in the autumn of 1821, when
she sang at the Théâtre Italien; and at Verona, during the Congress of
1822, she was received with tremendous enthusiasm. She returned to Paris
the same year, and in the opera of "Romeo e Giulietta" she exhibited
such power, both in singing and acting, as to call from the French
critics the most extravagant terms of praise. Mme. Pasta was then laying
the foundation of one of the most dazzling reputations ever gained by
prima donna. By sheer industry she had extended the range of her voice
to two octaves and a half--from A above the bass clef note to C flat,
and even to D in alt. Her tones had become rich and sweet, except when
she attempted to force them beyond their limits; her intonation was,
however, never quite perfect, being occasionally a little flat. Her
singing was pure and totally divested of all spurious finery; she added
little to what was set down by the composer, and that little was not
only in good taste, but had a great deal of originality to recommend
it. She possessed deep feeling and correct judgment. Her shake was
most beautiful; Signor Pacini's well-known cavatina, "Il soave e bel
contento"--the peculiar feature of which consisted in the solidity and
power of a sudden shake, contrasted with the detached staccato of the
first bar--was written for Mme. Pasta. Some of her notes were sharp
almost to harshness, but this defect with the greatness of genius she
overcame, and even converted into a beauty; for in passages of profound
passion her guttural tones were thrilling. The irregularity of her lower
notes, governed thus by a perfect taste and musical tact, aided to a
great extent in giving that depth of expression which was one of
the principal charms of her singing; indeed, these lower tones were
peculiarly suited for the utterance of vehement passion, producing an
extraordinary effect by the splendid and unexpected contrast which they
enabled her to give to the sweetness of the upper tones, causing a
kind of musical discordance indescribably pathetic and melancholy. Her
accents were so plaintive, so penetrating, so profoundly tragical, that
no one could resist their influence.
Her genius as a tragedienne surpassed her talent as a singer. When on
the stage she was no longer Pasta, but Tancredi, Romeo, Desdemona,
Medea, or Semiramide. Ebers tells us in his "Seven Years of the King's
Theatre": "Nothing could have been more free from trick or affectation
than Pasta's performance. There is no perceptible effort to resemble a
character she plays; on the contrary, she enters the stage the character
itself; transposed into the situation, excited by the hopes and fears,
breathing the life and spirit of the being she represents." Mme.
Pasta was a slow reader, but she had in perfection the sense for the
measurement and proportion of time, a most essential musical quality.
This gave her an instinctive feeling for propriety, which no lessons
could teach; that due recognition of accent and phrase, that absence
of flurry and exaggeration, such as makes the discourse and behavior of
some people memorable, apart from the value of matter and occasion; that
intelligent composure, without coldness, which impresses and reassures
those who see and hear. A quotation from a distinguished critic already
cited gives a vivid idea of Pasta's influence on the most cold and
fastidious judges:
"The greatest grace of all, depth and reality of expression, was
possessed by this remarkable artist as few (I suspect) before her--as
none whom I have since admired--have possessed it. The best of her
audience were held in thrall, without being able to analyze what made up
the spell, what produced the effect, so soon as she opened her lips.
Her recitative, from the moment she entered, was riveting by its truth.
People accustomed to object to the conventionalities of opera (just as
loudly as if all drama was not conventional too), forgave the singing
and the strange language for the sake of the direct and dignified appeal
made by her declamation. Mme. Pasta never changed her readings, her
effects, her ornaments. What was to her true, when once arrived at,
remained true for ever. To arrive at what stood with her for truth, she
labored, made experiments, rejected with an elaborate care, the result
of which, in one meaner or more meager, must have been monotony. But the
impression made on me was that of being always subdued and surprised for
the first time. Though I knew what was coming, when the passion broke
out, or when the phrase was sung, it seemed as if they were something
new, electrical, immediate. The effect to me is at present, in the
moment of writing, as the impression made by the first sight of the sea,
by the first snow mountain, by any of those first emotions which
never entirely pass away. These things are utterly different from the
fanaticism of a _laudator temporis acti_."
When Talma heard her declaim, at the time of her earliest celebrity in
Paris, he said: "Here is a woman of whom I can still learn. One turn of
her beautiful head, one glance of her eye, one light motion of her hand,
is, with her, sufficient to express a passion. She can raise the soul
of the spectator to the highest pitch of astonishment and delight by one
tone of her voice. 'O Dio!' as it comes from her breast, swelling over
her lips, is of indescribable effect." Poetical and enthusiastic by
temperament, the crowning excellence of her art was a grand simplicity.
There was a sublimity in her expressions of vehement passion which was
the result of measured force, energy which was never wasted, exalted
pathos that never overshot the limits of art. Vigorous without violence,
graceful without artifice, she was always greatest when the greatest
emergency taxed her powers.
Pasta's second great part at the Theatre Italien was in Rossini's
"Tancredi," an impersonation which was one of the most enchanting and
finished of her lighter _rôles_. "She looked resplendent in the casque
and cuirass of the Red Cross Knight. No one could ever sing the part of
_Tancredi_ like Mine. Pasta: her pure taste enabled her to add grace to
the original composition by elegant and irreproachable ornaments. 'Di
tanti palpiti' had been first presented to the Parisians by Mme. Fodor,
who covered it with rich and brilliant embroidery, and gave it what
an English critic, Lord Mount Edgcumbe, afterward termed its
country-dance-like character. Mine. Pasta, on the contrary, infused into
this air its true color and expression, and the effect was ravishing."
"Tancredi" was quickly followed by "Otello," and the impassioned
spirit, energy, delicacy, and tenderness with which Pasta infused the
character of _Desdemona_ furnished the theme for the most lavish praises
on the part of the critics. It was especially in the last act that her
acting electrified her audiences. Her transition from hope to terror,
from supplication to scorn, culminating in the vehement outburst "_sono
innocente_," her last frenzied looks, when, blinded by her disheveled
hair and bewildered with her conflicting emotions, she seems to seek
fruitlessly the means of flight, were awful. The varied resources of the
great art of tragedy were consummately drawn forth by her _Desdemona_,
in this opera, though she was yet to astonish the world with that
impersonation imperishably linked with her name in the history of art.
"Elisabetta" and "Mosè in Egitto" were also revived for her, and she
filled the leading characters in both with _éclat_.