The Times Great Lives. Anna Temkin

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СКАЧАТЬ m’est égal, mais qu’elle la chante.’

      Her first appearance at Covent Garden on May 24, 1888, in Lucia di Lammermoor, was a more qualified success. Curiously enough, she was more commended at first for some supposed dramatic power than for the only two things which have ever really mattered in her case – the exquisite voice and the perfect use of it. From London she returned to the more congenial atmosphere of Brussels, and in the following year, 1889, proceeded to the conquest of Paris, where she triumphed as Ophélie in Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet. In Paris Mme Melba had the advantage of studying the parts of Marguerite in Faust and of Juliette with Gounod, and she took part in the first performance of Roméo et Juliette in French at Covent Garden in 1889.

      From this time onward Mme Melba had only to visit one country after another to be acclaimed. From St Petersburg, where she sang before the Tsar in 1891, to Chicago, where in 1893 her singing with the de Reszkes was one of the features of the ‘World’s Fair’, the tale of her triumphs was virtually the same. But from the musical point of view a more important episode was her prolonged visit to Italy between these two events. Here she met the veteran Verdi and the young Puccini. Verdi helped her in the study of Aïda and of Desdemona (Otello). She made the acquaintance of Puccini’s Manon, but La Bohème, the only one of his operas with which she was to be identified, was not yet written. Another young composer who begged leave to be presented was Leoncavallo. She sang Nedda in the first London performance of I Pagliacci a little later.

      Mme Melba’s early American appearances recall her few experiments with Wagner. She sang Elisabeth in Tannhäuser at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, during her first season there, and it was later in America that she made her single appearance as Brünnhilde. She had previously sung Elsa (Lohengrin) at Covent Garden, but she quite rightly realized that Wagner’s music was not for her. The only pity, when one recalls her repertory, is that either lack of opportunity or of inclination prevented her from turning to Mozart instead.

      Her actual repertory amounted to 25 operas, of which, however, only some 10 parts are those which will be remembered as her own. La Bohème was the last of these to be added, and she first sang in it at Philadelphia in 1898, having studied it with the composer in Italy earlier in the year. She was so much in love with the music that she would not rest until she had brought it to London, and it was largely by her personal influence that it was accepted at Covent Garden. Indeed, she persuaded the management to stage La Bohème with the promise to sing some favourite scena from her repertory in addition on each night that she appeared in it until the success of the opera was assured. She kept the promise, though the rapid success of the opera soon justified her faith. To most of the present generation of opera-goers ‘Melba nights’ meant La Bohéme nights, and, for several seasons before the War and when Covent Garden reopened after it, there could not be too many of them for the public. She bade farewell to Covent Garden on June 8, 1926, when, in the presence of the King and Queen, she sang in acts from Roméo et Juliette, Otello, and La Bohème. Actually her last appearance in London was at a charity concert in 1929.

      It is difficult now to realize that 30 years or so ago La Bohème seemed to offer few opportunities for the special characteristics of Mme Melba’s art, intimately associated as it then was with Donizetti, the earlier Verdi, and Gounod. But those characteristics in reality had full play in all music based on the expression of a pure vocal cantilena, and could appear in the simply held note at the end of the first act of La Bohème as completely as in the fioritura of ‘Caro nome’ or ‘The Jewel Song’. The essence of her power was due to such an ease in the production of pure tone in all parts of the voice and in all circumstances that there was no barrier between the music and the listener.

      It is unnecessary to enlarge on the personal popularity of Melba here, or the almost passionate devotion which she inspired among her own countrymen on the various occasions when she revisited Australia. Her book of reminiscences, Melodies and Memories (1925), was disappointing, for it contained too little about her methods and experiences. She was generous in giving her services for good causes, and her work for War charities is remembered in the title conferred in 1918. She was then created dbe, and gbe in 1927.

      Sir Edward Elgar

      The laureate of English music

      23 February 1934

      The number of musicians of whom it can safely be said that the general public needs no explanation of their importance and asks for no justification of the place which their fellows accord them is small. Among composers this country has possessed two in the last century – Sullivan and Elgar. Of these the case of Elgar, who died yesterday at his home at Worcester at the age of 76, is the more remarkable because his genius was devoted to the larger forms of the musical art with which the ordinary man is supposed to sympathize least readily – the symphony, the concerto, and the oratorio. He never associated himself with the theatre in any close way; he never held any dominating official position in the musical life of the country, he rather stood aloof from institutions of any sort. Through nearly half his working life he was entirely unknown; during the remainder he was unhesitatingly accepted as our musical laureate.

      In these days when the term ‘British composer’ is on everyone’s lips it is worth while remarking that Elgar by descent, upbringing, and education was entirely English. His father, a native of Dover, had settled in Worcester, where he kept a music shop and was organist to the Roman Catholic church of St George. His mother, Ann Greening, came from Herefordshire.

      Edward William Elgar (he entirely dropped the second name in later years) was born at Broadheath, a village about four miles from Worcester, on June 2, 1857, and spent his youth in the typically English environment of the cathedral town and its surrounding country. Much has been said of Elgar’s upbringing as a member of the Roman Catholic Church and of the inspiration which it brought to his greatest choral work, The Dream of Gerontius, all of which is natural and true. But Elgar used to resent the idea that these influences in any way cut him off from others. As a boy he was constantly in and out of the cathedral listening to the music of its daily services and drawing many of his earliest and most treasured experiences from them. The Three Choirs Festivals at Worcester were sources of the most vivid delight to him. Indeed, it was characteristic of him at all times, that he loved to show himself knowledgeable on whatever others were inclined to think might lie a little outside his sphere of interest.

      Early Compositions

      Young Elgar had no systematic musical education, but he entered into all the musical activities of his father, which were many. He played the organ at St George’s, and, indeed, succeeded his father as regular organist there; he played the bassoon in a wind quintet (which perhaps accounts for the bassoon solo in the ‘Enigma’ Variations No. 111), but more particularly the violin, his thorough knowledge of which certainly had something to do with the brilliant passage-work of the famous concerto. He took an active part in all local music, particularly the concerts of the Worcester Glee Club, whose members gave him a bow for his violin in recognition of his services. Above all, he composed constantly, and some of the music now known in the orchestral suites, The Wand of Youth, dates from his boyhood. Pieces for violin and piano, part-songs, a motet, slight essays for the orchestra, are chief among such early works as survive. The interesting thing about them is that among much that is obvious and some that is trite one comes across turns of melody and harmony which are unmistakably the voice of Elgar. Even the first phrase of ‘Salut d’Amour’ must be allowed to be one of them.

      Elgar was 32 years of age when he married, in 1889, Caroline Alice, only daughter of General Sir Henry Gee Roberts. This is hardly the place to write particularly of his wife’s influence on his career, but beyond question her unfaltering faith in him both as man and as artist sustained him through all the disappointments of his isolated position and enabled him to hold the difficult course towards success to which his helm was set.

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