Thirty Years of Musical Life in London, 1870-1900

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

99-100

text excerpt

Gayarre was not a great tenor in the highest sense of the term. Nevertheless, he possessed vocal and histrionic attributes of a very distinguished kind, and chance so willed it that he was destined to "bridge over” to a large extent the interval that separated the final retirement of Mario from the advent (as a tenor) of Jean de Reszke. By birth a Spaniard, and hailing from Pampeluna (the town in which Sarasate was born), Giuliano Gayarre had studied and won his early successes in Italy. He was an exponent of the new quasi-nasal Thirty Years of school of tenor singers, which already had Tamagno for one of its leading protagonists. To my ears his production, on the night he made his debut at Covent Garden (April 7, 1877), sounded strange and not wholly pleasant. Still, the voice traveled well, and he sang the music of Gennaro with so much tenderness, so much charm, allied to genuine dramatic feeling and expression, that the crowded house forthwith accorded him a splendid reception. I declined to join in the general chorus of “Another Mario!” It struck me as little less than sacrilege to compare with the divine voice of that tenor an organ which could occasionally descend, or ascend, to the utterance of tones that quickly earned the name of the “Gayarre bleat." 

Gayarre was not a great tenor in the highest sense of the term. Nevertheless, he possessed vocal and histrionic attributes of a very distinguished kind, and chance so willed it that he was destined to "bridge over” to a large extent the interval that separated the final retirement of Mario from the advent (as a tenor) of Jean de Reszke. By birth a Spaniard, and hailing from Pampeluna (the town in which Sarasate was born), Giuliano Gayarre had studied and won his early successes in Italy. He was an exponent of the new quasi-nasal Thirty Years of school of tenor singers, which already had Tamagno for one of its leading protagonists. To my ears his production, on the night he made his debut at Covent Garden (April 7, 1877), sounded strange and not wholly pleasant. Still, the voice traveled well, and he sang the music of Gennaro with so much tenderness, so much charm, allied to genuine dramatic feeling and expression, that the crowded house forthwith accorded him a splendid reception. I declined to join in the general chorus of “Another Mario!” It struck me as little less than sacrilege to compare with the divine voice of that tenor an organ which could occasionally descend, or ascend, to the utterance of tones that quickly earned the name of the “Gayarre bleat." 

excerpt from 'Thirty Years of Musical Life in London, 1870-1900' pp. 99-100 (223 words)

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