Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

EUBINI
celebrity, a Frenchwoman by birth, and pupil
of the Paris Conservatoire.
His first appearance at Paris was on Oct. 6,
1825, in the
'
Cenerentola,' and was followed
by others in
' '
Otello ' and La Donna del Lago.'
He Was hailed unanimously as
'
King of Tenors,'
and began here the series of triumphs which
lasted as long as his stage career. He was still
bound by his engagement with Barbaja, who
by this time had become aware of his worth,
and only yielded him for six months to the
Th^^tre Italien, claiming him back at the end
of that time to sing at Naples, then at Milan,
and at Vienna.
Up to this time his laurels had been won in
Rossini's music, on which his style was first
formed, and it was not till now that he found
his real element, the vehicle most congenial to
his special individuality, and thanks to which
he was to reach the summit of his fame.
Eubini was the foundation and raison d'Ure of
the whole phase of Italian opera that succeeded
the Rossinian period. He and Bellini were
said to have been born for one another, and in
all probability Rubini was not more captivated
by the tender, pathetic strains of Bellini, than
the sensitive Bellini was influenced by Rubini's
wonderful powers of expression. Such a singer
is an actual source of inspiration to a composer,
who hears his own ideas not only realised, but,
it may be, glorified. During the whole composition
of 'II Pirata,' Rubini stayed with
'
La Sonnambula ' and
Bellini, singing each song as it was finished.
To this fortunate companionship it cannot be
doubted that we owe
'I Puritani.' Donizetti, again, achieved no
great success until the production of Anna
'
Bolena,' his thirty-second opera, in which the
tenor part was written expressly for Rubini,
who achieved in it some of his greatest triumphs.
It was followed by ' Lucia,' Lucrezia,' Marino
' '
Faliero,' and others, in which a like inspiration
was followed by the same result.
Rubini first came to England in 1831, when
freed from his engagement with BSrbaja, and
from that time till 1843 he divided each year
between Paris and this country, singing much
at concerts and provincial festivals, as well as
at the Opera, and creating a furore wherever
he went.
His voice extended from E of the bass clef
to B of the treble, in chest notes, besides commanding
a falsetto register as far as F or even
G above that. A master of every kind of florid
execution, and delighting at times in its display,
no one seems ever to have equalled him when
he turned these powers into the channel of
emotional vocal expression, nor to have produced
so magical an effect by the singing of a simple,
pathetic melody, without ornament of any kind.
He indulged too much in the use of head-voice,
but so perfect is his art,' says Escudier, writing
'
at the time, 'that the transition from one
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RUBINI 177
register to the other is imperceptible to the
hearer. . . . Gifted with immense lungs, he
can so control his breath as never to expend
more of it than is absolutely necessary for producing
the exact degree of sound he wishes.
So adroitly does he conceal the artifice of respiration
that it is impossible to discover when
his breath renews itself, inspiration and expiration
being apparently simultaneous, as if one
were to fill a cup with one hand while emptying
it with the other. In this manner he can
deliver the longest and most drawn-out phrases
without any solution of continuity. ' His stage
appearance was not imposing, for his figure was
short and awkward, his features plain and
marked with small-pox. He was no actor, and
seems rarely to have even tried to act. His
declamation of recitative left something to be
'
desired. In concerted pieces he does not give
himself the trouble of singing at all, and if he
goes as far as to open his mouth, it is only to
preserve the most absolute silence ' (Escudier).
'
He would walk through a good third of an
opera languidly, giving the notes correctly and
little more,—in a duet blending his voice
intimately with that of his partner (in this he
was unsurpassed) ; but when his own moment
arrived there wasno longer coldness or hesitation,
but a passion, a fervour, a putting forth to the
utmost of every resource of consummate vocal
art and emotion, which converted the most
incredulous, and satisfied those till then inclined
to treat him as one whose reputation had been
overrated ' (Chorley). Some of his greatest
effects were produced by an excessive use of
strong contrasts between piano and forte, which
'
in the last years of his reign degenerated into
the alternation of a scarcely-audible whisper
and a shout.' He was the earliest to use that
thrill of the voice known as the vibrato (with
the subsequent abuse of which we are all of us
too familiar), at first as a means of emotional
effect, afterwards to conceal the deterioration
of the organ. To him, too, was originally due
that species of musical sob produced by the
repercussion of a prolonged note before the final
cadence, which, electrifying at first as a new
effect, has become one of the commonest of vocal
Vulgarisms. But such was his perfection of
finish, such the beauty of his expression, such
his thorough identification of himself, not with
his dramatic impersonations but with his songs,
that his hold on the public remained unweakened
to the last, even when his voice was a wreck
and his peculiarities had become mannerisms.
He has had numberless imitators, but no rival
in the art of gathering up and expressing in
one song the varied emotions of a whole opera,
and to this may be due the fact that he was as
much worshipped and as affectionately remembered
by numbers who never set foot in a
theatre, as by the most constant of opera-goers.
In 1843 he started with Liszt on a tour