FullReads

It was as difficult to distribute the various facts of the whole effect, as to identify one’s self. I had only a public and general consciousness of the delight given by the harmony of hues in the parquet below; and concerning the orchestra I had at first no distinct impression save of the three hundred and thirty violin-bows held erect like standing wheat at one motion of the director’s wand, and then falling as if with the next he swept them down. Afterwards files of men with horns, and other files of men with drums and cymbals, discovered themselves; while far above all, certain laborious figures pumped or ground with incessant obeisance at the apparatus supplying the organ with wind.

What helped, more than anything else, to restore you your dispersed and wandering individuality was the singing of Parepa-Rosa, as she triumphed over the harmonious rivalry of the orchestra. There was something in the generous amplitude and robust cheerfulness of this great artist that accorded well with the ideal of the occasion; she was in herself a great musical festival; and one felt, as she floated down the stage with her far-spreading white draperies, and swept the audience a colossal courtesy, that here was the embodied genius of the Jubilee. I do not trust myself to speak particularly of her singing, for I have the natural modesty of people who know nothing about music, and I have not at command the phraseology of those who pretend to understand it; but I say that her voice filled the whole edifice with delicious melody, that it soothed and composed and utterly enchanted, that, though two hundred violins accompanied her, the greater sweetness of her note prevailed over all, like a mighty will commanding many. What a sublime ovation for her when a hundred thousand hands thundered their acclaim! A victorious general, an accepted lover, a successful young author,–these know a measure of bliss, I dare say; but in one throb, the singer’s heart, as it leaps in exultation at the loud delight of her applausive thousands, must out-enjoy them all. Let me lay these poor little artificial flowers of rhetoric at the feet of the divine singer, as a faint token of gratitude and eloquent intention.

When Parepa (or Prepper, as I have heard her name popularly pronounced) had sung, the revived consciousness of an individual life rose in rebellion against the oppression of that dominant vastness. In fact, human nature can stand only so much of any one thing. To a certain degree you accept and conceive of facts truthfully, but beyond this a mere fantasticality rules; and having got enough of grandeur, the senses played themselves false. That array of fluttering and tuning people on the southern slope began to look minute, like the myriad heads assembled in the infinitesimal photograph which you view through one of those little half-inch lorgnettes; and you had the satisfaction of knowing that to any lovely infinitesimality yonder you showed no bigger than a carpet-tack. The whole performance now seemed to be worked by those tireless figures pumping at the organ, in obedience to signals from a very alert figure on the platform below. The choral and orchestral thousands sang and piped and played; and at a given point in the scena from Verdi, a hundred fairies in red shirts marched down through the sombre mass of puppets and beat upon as many invisible anvils.

This was the stroke of anti-climax; and the droll sound of those anvils, so far above all the voices and instruments in its pitch, thoroughly disillusioned you and restored you finally to your proper entity and proportions. It was the great error of the great Jubilee, and where almost everything else was noble and impressive,–where the direction was faultless, and the singing and instrumentation as perfectly controlled as if they were the result of one volition,–this anvil-beating was alone ignoble and discordant,–trivial and huge merely. Not even the artillery accompaniment, in which the cannon were made to pronounce words of two syllables, was so bad.