Garcia the Centenarian And His Times Part 2

The events of the next three years of the Peninsular War were not witnessed by him, for the place remained in the hands of the French until 1812, when he saw Madrid evacuated by Bonaparte, and occupied on August 12 by Wellington and his troops after the battle of Salamanca.

With his main army the English general now advanced on Burgos, which, however, resisted all his a.s.saults; and the Anglo-Portuguese army had to retire once more into Portugal, while for the last time Joseph returned to the Spanish capital.

In the summer of 1813 Wellington broke up from his quarters, and, marching in a north-easterly direction, attempted to cut off all communication between France and Madrid. The movement completely overthrew the French domination in Spain, and Joseph Bonaparte fled with all the troops he could collect. Wellington followed, and came up with the French army at Vittoria, where he defeated them.

This victory, by which the invaders were driven back into France, was followed by a burst of national enthusiasm. The Spanish guerillas destroyed every isolated French post, and on October 8, 1813, Wellington crossed the French borders with his army.

A few months later Ferdinand VII. was restored to the throne of Spain.

Such were the events through which his native land was pa.s.sing during the childhood of Manuel Garcia, and which he was able to recall in after life.

What memories and experiences must he have had to pour into the ears of his parents when, in the summer of 1814, he was summoned to join them at Naples, where they had settled two years previously, having been forced to leave Paris owing to the strong feeling against Spain!

[Ill.u.s.tration: MANUEL GARCIA'S FATHER.]

CHAPTER III.

NAPLES.

(1814-1816.)

When Manuel Garcia joined his parents in Italy in the summer of 1814, being at the time in his tenth year, he found Naples under the rule of King Murat.

Here he saw for the first time his sister Maria, who was now six years old, while his father he found installed in the position of princ.i.p.al tenor in the chapel choir of King Murat. The elder Garcia had held this post for about two years, having been appointed immediately on his arrival from Paris. Since then he had been devoting himself to a complete study of the art of singing under his friend and teacher, Ansani.

This celebrated tenor was able to hand on to him the Italian vocal traditions of that "Bel Canto" school which had come down from the old Neapolitan maestro, Porpora.

Soon after Manuel came to Italy he was taken by his father to see Ansani, who not only heard him sing, but gave him a few informal lessons. It was a case of winter and spring, for while the pupil was in his tenth year, the teacher was approaching his seventieth. With this fact we are brought face to face with an almost incredible link with the past. Ansani was nearly twenty when Porpora died, in his eighty-second year. A remark which Manuel Garcia once made rather points to the possibility that Ansani may have had a few lessons from Porpora himself.

Whether this was absolutely true I know not,--at any rate it may well have been so. Accept the supposition, and those who had the honour of studying under the "centenarian" would at once be placed in a position to say that they were pupils of one whose master had himself received lessons from a man born in 1687. The possibility is a fascinating one.

Giovanni Ansani himself was an interesting personality. Born in Rome about the middle of the eighteenth century, it has been reported that he once met Bach. As, however, the German composer died in the year 1750, about the time that Ansani was still busying himself with the feeding-bottle--or its eighteenth-century equivalent--the story must be regarded with some suspicion, to say the least of it.

After a musical training received in Italy, he sang in various parts of the Continent. Twenty years before the close of the century he made his appearance in London, and at once took the first place. He soon left, however, on account of disputes with Roncaglia.

In 1781 he returned to England, and Dr Burney, who heard him sing in that year, has described him as the sweetest, albeit one of the most powerful, tenors of his generation. He was a spirited actor, and had a full, fine-toned, and commanding voice, while, according to Gervasoni, he had a very rare truth of intonation, great power of expression, and most perfect method both of voice emission and vocalisation. His wife, Maccherini, was also a singer, and accompanied him to London on his second visit. He himself was always noted for a quarrelsome disposition, and as a prima donna his wife had an almost equally bad temper. Such jealousy in fact existed between them that, when either was applauded for singing, the other was accustomed to go into the pit and hiss.

In 1784 Ansani appeared at Florence, and toured Italy. At the age of fifty he retired and settled in Naples, where he devoted himself to teaching. It was some twelve years later that he began to give lessons to the elder Garcia.

When Manuel joined his parents, he at once commenced to study singing under his father's guidance. The training of those days was a much slower process than that which is deemed necessary at the present time.

Months, indeed years, would be spent in the practice of simple solfeggi, to be followed by exercises in rhythm and studies for intonation.

The monotony of the first portion of this training evidently became very wearisome in time, for Senor Garcia would afterwards recall how one day, after being made to sing an endless variety of ascending scales, his desire for a change became so great that he could not resist bursting out, "Oh dear! mayn't I sing down the scale even once?" The training of those days was indeed a hard one, but it turned out artists who had a very wonderful command over their voices.

After a time Manuel began to find these severe studies irksome. He seems, moreover, to have had no particular vocation for the lyrical stage, and the bent of his mind, even at that early period, had a leaning towards science.

As a boy, he had a soprano voice of beautiful quality, and it has been a.s.serted that during the stay in Italy he was appointed to a place in the cathedral choir. Absolute verification of this statement is practically impossible to obtain, though there seems no reason for doubting its truth. On the other hand, there is a strong likelihood that it may have been confused with the fact that the _elder_ Garcia (whose name was also Manuel) was in the chapel choir.

From this time the training of his voice continued practically without intermission, under his father's tuition, till his twentieth year. It was largely due to the fact that work was not stopped during that dangerous period at the commencement of p.u.b.erty, that he a.s.signed the break-down of his voice in after years.

The elder Garcia took the greatest delight and pride in the early education and musical training of his son, and among many other valuable lessons, he impressed upon him that a singer must not only know how to use his voice, but must, above all, be a thorough musician.

As we have already seen, Manuel was taken to see Ansani, who gave him a few lessons. In addition to this, much help was received from Zingarelli, when the elder Garcia was too busy to take him. His intelligent brain could therefore make a blend of Spanish and Italian methods. To this he added in after life his own observations on the human voice, and applied the scientific theories which he formed and eventually corroborated by means of his laryngoscope. It was by the wise combination of this knowledge that he was able to evolve the magnificent Method which produced Jenny Lind.

Zingarelli was a man whose name is worth pausing over for a moment, for some episodes of his life are of considerable interest. In 1804 he had succeeded Guglielmi as Maestro di Cappella of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

When Napoleon in the zenith of his imperial power gave his son the pompous t.i.tle of "King of Rome," he ordered rejoicings throughout his kingdom, and a "Te Deum" was arranged to be sung at St Peter's in Rome.

When, however, the authorities, both French and Italian, were a.s.sembled for the performance of this servile work, Zingarelli refused to have anything to do with it, and added that nothing would induce him to acknowledge the rule of the Corsican usurper. Upon this he was arrested, and, by Napoleon's orders, taken to Paris. Here he was immediately set free and granted a pension, owing to the fact that Napoleon preferred his music to that of any other composer.

In 1810 he left Paris for Naples, where three years later he was appointed director of the Royal College of Music, and he was holding this important post when Manuel came from Spain. Some eighteen months later, just before the Garcia family left for Paris, he succeeded Paisiello as Maestro di Cappella at the Neapolitan Cathedral; and these two positions he continued to hold until his death at the age of eighty-five.

During the sojourn in Italy the elder Garcia was not only in Murat's private choir, but was also _primo tenore_ of the King's Opera Company at the San Carlo. I remember Senor Garcia one day giving an amusing account of his father's first appearance there.

Before he set out for his opening rehearsal he had come to the conclusion that it would be a splendid thing if he could hit upon some way of proving to the members of the orchestra that he was not one of the ordinary small fry possessed of a voice and little else. He wanted to gain their respect both as a musician and as a singer. This is how he managed to accomplish his desire.

His opening aria in the opera to be rehea.r.s.ed was in the key of E flat.

The orchestra played the introductory bars, and waited with a casual interest for the new singer's opening phrase. The tenor commenced, but, instead of doing so in the key in which they were playing, he began to sing a semitone higher, in E natural. At first they were horrified at the discords which resulted. Gradually, however, as the aria went on, and the vocalist still sang exactly a semitone above the key in which they were playing, it began to dawn upon them that, instead of being sharp through nervousness or lack of ear, he was keeping a half tone too high intentionally throughout the piece. Consequently, when they heard him continue in E natural, without a moment's hesitation, or a single false note (for so great a musician was he that he could abstract himself entirely from his surroundings and from the sound of the instruments), their disgust turned to surprise, then admiration, and finally enthusiasm. When the aria was concluded there was an enormous burst of applause and the wildest excitement among them all, for they saw what a really great singer they had found in this newcomer. Of course he sang the remainder of his part in the proper key, but by this novel entry he won the lasting respect of his comrades.

The anecdote afforded a good ill.u.s.tration of his exceptional powers. The elder Garcia was certainly a wonderful man, and in some ways a unique figure in the history of music, for it is doubtful if any other singer has duplicated his extraordinary talent and versatility. Attention has already been called to the fact that he was conductor and impresario. As a composer he was responsible for over forty operas, of which number seventeen were Spanish, nineteen Italian, and seven French; and in many cases he was even responsible for the libretto. The greater number of these works were performed in Spain, France, and America.

When he was in Paris "El Poeta Calculista" was given, as we have already said, with the greatest success in 1809, and three years later "The Caliph of Bagdad" received no less appreciation. His power as an actor was equal to that as a singer, while his Spanish temperament gave a fire to his impersonations which could not but awaken enthusiasm.

"J'aime la fureur andalouse de cet homme," wrote a contemporary critic; "il aime tout."

But of all his qualities that which perhaps stood out most was a remarkable gift of extemporisation. It was this which first attracted the notice of Rossini, and led him to write the tenor _role_ in "Elisabeth" for the elder Garcia. The result was so satisfactory that when he set to work on his next opera, "Il Barbiere di Seviglia," he wrote the part of Almaviva specially for him.

The story of this production, as Manuel Garcia related it, was an interesting one.

In the December of 1815 Rossini had bound himself to produce a new opera by the 20th of the following month. He hesitated at first about accepting a libretto which Paisiello had treated so successfully, but having obtained that composer's permission he wrote the entire score in a fortnight. To avoid all appearance of rivalry with Paisiello he named his work first of all, "Almaviva, or The Useless Precaution"; and it was accordingly produced under this t.i.tle in Rome at the Argentina Theatre on February 5, 1816, with the following cast:--

_Rossini_ Signora Giorgi Righetti.

_Berta_ Signorina Rossi.

_Figaro_ Signor Luigi Zamboni.

_Bartolo_ Signor Botticelli.

_Basilio_ Signor Vitarelli.

_Count Almaviva_ Signor Garcia.

The theatre was packed with the adherents of the older composer, who resented the new effort as an intrusion on his rights. In consequence of this the work was unmercifully d.a.m.ned, but it was kept on the stage and continually grew in favour until it became one of the most popular comic operas ever written.

These two operas, "Elisabeth" and "Il Barbiere," were not by any means the only ones in which the elder Garcia undertook the tenor _role_ at the initial performance, for in the course of the long career which followed he had the honour of creating a number of other parts.

As a singer, according to his son, his forte lay in the rendition of the lighter and more florid music, the voice being remarkable for its extraordinary flexibility. It was this faculty which gave his inventive powers their full scope in the extemporisations which he was wont to introduce into the various arie. This custom, it may be well to point out, was quite in accordance with the tastes and actual wishes of the composers of that time.

Among the old musicians it used to be customary to write a mere outline or suggestion of the voice part. Particularly was this the case when there was a return to the original theme, while it applied equally to the conventional ending found in nearly all arie of that time. The singers were expected to elaborate the simple melody given them, and to raise upon this foundation a graceful edifice, adorned with what ornaments their individual taste dictated, and suited to their own powers of execution.

The following ill.u.s.tration will prove the truth of the above a.s.sertion.