Jenny’s first coming upon the stage at the Concert has been described by
every critic. Several of them have pronounced it done rather awkwardly.
It seemed to me, however, that the language of curtesies was never
before so varied—never before so eloquently effective. She expressed
more than the three degrees of humility—profound, profounder
profoundest—more than the three degrees of simplicity—simple, simpler,
simplest. In the impression she produced, there was conviction of the
superlative of both, and something to spare. Who, of the spectators that
remembered Steffanoni’s superb indifference to the public—(expressed by
curtesies just as low when making her first appearance to sing the very
solo that Jenny was about to sing)—did not recognize, at Castle Garden,
that night, the eloquent inspiration there might be, if not the
excessive art, in a curtsey on the stage? I may as well record, for the
satisfaction of the great Good-as-you—(the “Casta Diva” of our
country)—that Jenny’s reverence to this our divinity, the other night,
was not practised before Kings and Courts. I was particularly struck, in
Germany, with the reluctant civility expressed by her curtesies to the
box of the Sovereign Grand Duke, and to the audience of nobles and
gamblers. In England, when the Queen was present, it seemed to me that
Jenny wished to convey, in her manner of acknowledging the applause for
her performance of La Somnambula, that her profession was distasteful to
her. In both these instances, there was certainly great reserve in her
“making of her manners”—in this country there has, as certainly, been
none.
The opening solo of “Casta Diva” was well selected to show the _quality_
of Jenny Lind’s voice, though the dramatic effect of this passage of
Bellini’s opera could not be given by a voice that had formed itself
upon her life and character. Pure invocation to the Moon, the Norman
Deity, as the two first stanzas are, the latter half of the solo is a
passionate prayer of the erring Priestess to her unlawful love; and, to
be sung truly, must be sung passionately, and with the cadences of love
and sin. On Jenny’s lips, the devout purity and imploring worship and
contrition, proper to the stanzas in which the Deity is addressed, are
_continued throughout_; and the Roman, who has both desecrated and been
faithless to her, is besought to return and sin again, with accents of
sublimely unconscious innocence. To those who listened without thought
of the words, it was a delicious melody, and the voice of an angel—for,
in its pathetic and half mournful sweetness, that passage, on such a
voice, goes straight to the least expectant and least wakeful fountain
of tears—but it was Jenny Lind, and not Norma, and she should have the
air set to new words or to an affecting and elevated passage of
Scripture.
And it strikes me, by the way, as a little wonderful—Jenny Lind being
what she is, and the religious world being so numerous—that the
inspired Swede, in giving up the stage, has not gone over to sacred
music altogether. It would have been worthy of her, as well as
abundantly in her power, to have created a Sacred Musical Drama—or, at
least, so much of one, as the _singing the songs of Scripture, in
costume and character_. Had the divine music of Casta Diva, the other
night, for instance, been the Lamentation of the Daughter of Jeptha, and
had a background of religious reverence given to the singer its strong
relief, while the six thousand listeners were gazing with moist eyes
upon her, how immeasurably would not the effect of that mere Operatic
music have been heightened! With a voice and skill capable of almost
miraculous personation, and with a character of her own which gives her
the sacredness of an angel, she might truly “carry the world away,” were
the music but equal to that of the popular operas. Is it not possible to
originate this in our country? With hundreds of thousands of religious
people ready to form new audiences, when she has sung out her worldly
music, will not the pure-hearted, humble, simple, saint-like and gifted
Jenny commence a new career of _Sacred_ Music, on this side the water?
Some one told me, once, that he had heard her sing, in a private room,
that beautiful song, “I know that my Redeemer liveth!” with feeling and
expression such as he had never before thought possible. What a field
for a composer is the Bible! For how many of its personages—Mary,
Hagar, Miriam, Ruth—might single songs be written, that, sung in the
costume in which they are usually painted, and with such action as the
meaning required, would give boundless pleasure to the religious! The
class is well worth composing for, and they are well worthy of the
service of a _sequestrated choir_ of the world’s best singers—of whom
Jenny Lind may most triumphantly be the first.
That Jenny Lind sings like a woman with no weaknesses—that there is
plenty of soul in her singing, but no flesh and blood—that her voice
expresses more tender pity than tender passion, and more guidance in the
right way than sympathy with liability to the wrong—are reasons, I
think, why she should compare unfavorably with the impassioned sinners
of the opera, in opera scenes and characters. Grisi and Steffanoni give
better and more correct representations of “Norma,” both musical and
dramatic, than she—and naturally enough. It is wonderful how
differently the same music may be correctly sung; and how the quality of
the voice—which is inevitably an expression of the natural character
and habits of mind—makes its meaning! It is one of the most interesting
events to have seen Jenny Lind at all—but, her character and her
angelic acts apart, a woman “as is a woman” may better sing much of the
music she takes from operas.
Of the “Flute Song” and the “Echo Song” the papers have said enough, and
I will save what else I have to say of the great-souled maiden, till I
get back to my quarters in the city and have heard her again.