1802. On the 3d of June, madame Mara, the celebrated singer, took leave
of the English public. The _Dictionary of Musicians_, in recording the
performance, observes, that never certainly was such a transcendent
exercise of ability as a duet composed to display the mutual
accomplishments of madame Mara and Mrs. Billington, which they sung with
mutual excitement to the highest pitch of scientific expression.
Madame Mara was born at Cassel, in Germany, in 1750. Her paternal name
was Schmelling. Her early years were devoted to the study of the violin,
which, as a child, she played in England, but quitted that instrument,
and became a singer, by the advice of the English ladies, who disliked a
“female fiddler.” To this, perhaps, we owe the delight experienced from
the various excellencies of the most sublime singer the world ever saw.
Her first efforts were in songs of agility, yet her intonation was fixed
by the incessant practice of plain notes. To confirm the true foundation
of all good singing, by the purest enunciation, and the most precise
intonation of the scale, was the study of her life, and the part of her
voicing upon which she most valued herself. The late Dr. Arnold saw Mara
dance, by way of experiment, and assume the most violent gesticulations,
while going up and down the scale; yet such was her power of chest, that
the tone was as undisturbed and free as if she had stood in the
customary quiet position of the orchestra. The Italians say, that “of
the hundred requisites to make a singer, he who has a fine voice has
ninety-nine.” Mara had certainly the ninety-nine in one. Her voice was
in compass from G to E in altissimo, and all its notes were alike even
and strong; but she had the hundredth also in a supereminent degree, in
the grandest and most sublime conception. At the early age of
twenty-four, when she was at Berlin, in the immaturity of her judgment
and her voice, the best critics admitted her to have exceeded Cuzzoni,
Faustina, and indeed all those who preceded her. Our age has since seen
Billington and Catalani, yet in majesty and truth of _expression_ (a
term comprehending the most exalted gifts and requisites of vocal
science,) Mara retains her superiority. From her we deduce all that has
been learned concerning the great style of singing. The memory of her
performance of Handel’s sublime work, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’
is immortalized, together with the air itself. Often as we have since
heard it, we have never witnessed even an approach to the simple majesty
of Mara: it is to this air alone that she owes her highest preeminence;
and they who, not having heard her, would picture to themselves a just
portraiture of her performance, must image a singer who is fully equal
to the truest expression of the inspired words, and the scarcely less
inspired music of the loftiest of all possible compositions. She was the
child of sensibility: every thing she did was directed to the heart; her
tone, in itself pure, sweet, rich, and powerful, took all its various
colourings from the passion of the words; and she was not less true to
nature and feeling in ‘The Soldier tir’d,’ and in the more exquisite,
‘Hope told a flattering tale,’ than in ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’
Her tone, perhaps, was neither so sweet nor so clear as Billington’s,
nor so rich and powerful as Catalani’s, but it was the most touching
language of the soul. It was on the mastery of the feelings of her
audience that Mara set her claims to fame. She left surprise to others,
and was wisely content with an apparently, but not really humbler,
style; and she thus chose the part of genuine greatness.” Her
_elocution_ must be taken rather as universal than as national; for
although she passed some time in England when a child, and retained some
knowledge of the language, her pronunciation was continually marred by a
foreign accent, and those mutilations of our words which are inseparable
from the constant use of foreign languages, during a long residence
abroad. Notwithstanding this drawback, the impression she made, even
upon uneducated persons, always extremely alive to the ridiculous
effects of mispronunciation, and upon the unskilled in music, was
irresistible. The fire, dignity, and tenderness of her vocal appeal
could never be misunderstood; it spoke the language of all nations, for
it spoke to the feelings of the human heart. Mrs. Billington, with a
modesty becoming her great acquirements, voluntarily declared, that she
considered Mara’s execution to be superior to her own in genuine effect,
though not in extent, compass, rapidity, and complication. Mara’s
divisions always seemed to convey a _meaning_; they were vocal, not
instrumental; they had light and shade, and variety of tone; they
relaxed from or increased upon the time, according to the sentiment of
which they always appeared to partake: these attributes were always
remarkable in her open, true, and liquid shake, which was certainly full
of expression. Neither in ornaments, learned and graceful as they were,
nor in her cadences, did she ever lose sight of the appropriate
characteristics of the sense of melody. She was, by turns, majestic,
tender, pathetic, and elegant, but in the one or the other not a note
was breathed in vain. She justly held every species of ornamental
execution, to be subordinate to the grand end of uniting the effects of
sound sense, in their operations upon the feelings of her hearers. True
to this spirit, if any one commended the agility of a singer, Mara would
ask, “Can she sing six plain notes?” In majesty and simplicity, in
grace, tenderness, and pathos, in the loftiest attributes of art, in the
elements of the great style, she far transcended all her competitors in
the list of fame. She gave to Handel’s compositions their natural
grandeur and effect, which is, in our minds, the very highest degree of
praise that we can bestow. Handel is heavy, say the musical
fashion-mongers of the day. Milton would be heavy beyond endurance, from
the mouth of a reader of talents even above mediocrity. The fact is,
that to wield such arms, demands the strength of giants. Mara possessed
this heaven-gifted strength. It was in the performance of Handel that
her finer mind fixed its expression, and called to its aid all the
powers of her voice, and all the acquisitions of her science. From the
time of her retirement from England, Mara chiefly resided in Russia; yet
as the conflagration of Moscow destroyed great part of her property,
towards the close of the year 1819, or the beginning of 1820, she
returned to London, and determined on presenting herself once more to
the judgment of the English public, who had reverenced her name so
highly and so long. She, consequently, had a concert at the Opera-house,
but her powers were so diminished that it proved unsuccessful.
Justice to the channel which supplies these particulars concerning
madame Mara requires it to be observed, that they are almost verbatim
from a book of great merit and extensive usefulness, _The Dictionary of
Musicians_. Its information obviously results from extensive research
concerning the deceased, and personal acquaintance with many of the
living individuals whose memoirs it contains. The work has experienced
the fate of originality and excellence--it has been pillaged without
acknowledgment; and the discovery of an error or two, which the
pillagers themselves were too ignorant to detect, have enabled them to
abuse it. Although written by scientific hands, it is exempt from the
meanness of envy, and honestly renders honour to whom honour is due. It
is a book full of facts, with interspersions of anecdote so eloquently
related, that it is one of the pleasantest works a lover of literature
can take up, and is therefore not only a valuable accession to our
biographical collections, but to our stores of amusement.
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