AN'OLD TIME SINGER.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 826, 26 May 1910, Page 3

AN'OLD TIME SINGER.

MATIAIHT! VIAEDOT GAKCIA. Oil Friday, Madame JMardot Garcia died in Paris, and with her passed the fist singer of a glorious long past epoch, when the stars in the operatic firmament were Pasta, Malibrau, Grisi, Mario, Lablache, Persiani, Sontag, and later " Jenny Lind. . At the beginning of the century lived an" operatic singer, actor, composer, and teacher named Manuel Garcia, who had three children, each" destined to 'a greater fame, Malibran, Viardot Garcia, and Manuel Garcia, the younger the most famous teacher of the century. This Manuel Garcia, junr., it was whose researches into the iiieohanism of the human voice, and discoveries with the laryngoscope, placed the art ■ of singing upon a sounder physiological basis than it ever before was able to claim. :-. He had >many . famous, pupils, ■ the most famous of them all, Jenny Lind. It was he who after listening to the voice of tho Swedish Nightingale, which had been strained, and used altogether wrongly, • nearly broke' her heart with the famous dictum delivered terribly. "Mademoiselle, it would bo useless to teach you. You have no voice left." However, after she had rested, he did teach her, and Jenny Lind wrote gratefully later on: "I think it very fortunate for me that there exists a Garcia. I am enchanted with him as a teacher." Manuel Garcia, who included Santley among his pupils, died iu 180G, at the, age of 101. .. Maria Garcia is mentioned to-day'As one of the most ■ wonderful operatic eingers that the world has produced. She was original, with an extraordinary instinct for art, a great personal fascination, and an intractable voice, whose high notes had an indescribable brilliance, while hsr low tones were soft, sweet, and heart-reaching. She was a passionate self-willed child, and her father, who treated her with harsh fievority, declared that she could only become great through snffering. Suffering enough she had. During a season in New York, where Manuel Garcia had • taken an operatic company, which included several members of his. family, she married, partly to escape from her father's severity, a French merchant named Malibran, who was passionately in love with her, and whom she supposed to be very wealthy. A few weeks later he was bankrupt, and imprisoned for debt, and a few months later Madame Malibran returned to Paris, where she soon had the world at her feet. _ After her husband's death she married Dβ Beriot, the violinist, whom ehe loved passionately, but soon after she was thrown whilo hunting, and sus- ■ tained injuries from which she. died. She had been as much admired and loved as a woman," says a writer, "as she was worshipped as an artist." Pauline Garcia, thirteen years younger than Malibran, was her father's favourite child. At the age of six she could speak French, Spanish, Italian, and English fluently, and she learned as if by instinct to play the organ and piano, bhe travelled with her father in America and Mexico, where on one occasion they were seized by brigands who robbed Garcia, tied him to a tree, and made him sing for his life. Pauline was only seven when they returned to liUrope, and at ten she became the pupil of Liszt, making her first public appearance at the age of sixteen. Her voice was like her sistor.'s in quality with a contralto, and a soprano register the upper part literally fabricated bv an iron discipline. It was nn expressive, eloquent voice, "particularly adapted to outbursts of griet, joy, or despair." At nineteen she married' M. Viardot, the director of the Pans opera, and later on she visited most of the great cities, receiving everywhere the most enthusiastic welcome. Once, when another Finger was ill, she played the two parts of Alice and Isabella, in. liobert lo Diable representing the opposite roles of nrin' cess and peasant. It was in ISI7 G3 years ago that Jenny Lind wrote to her sister: 'I rejoice that it gives mo so' much pleasure to hear of Viardot Garcia s success in Berlin. I have never been envious for a moment." Those Bigmficant words, better than any other perhaps, give an idea of the position taken by-Yiarddt Garcia in the operatic worm. . After her retirement, 58 years ago Madame Viardot became a teacher, anil for many years held a professional chair nt the Paris Conservatoire, retaining always a loved and honoured place among her own friends. She has had some famous pupils, and right up to the last she was regarded as one of France's greatest vocal teachers. MTSS MTT.SOM teaches ladies and gentlemen the healthy, natural up-to-clata treatment for the hair. Vour scalp was given you to grow hair, make it do its vork. 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