Mr. Barnett and of Mr. Balfe) make bad opera
books. Thus it fell out that in 1829, or
thereabouts, a gentle and graceful young Sicilian
composer—Bellini—chose this subject for music.
From his first outset in art—unable to compete
with Rossini in versatile richness of melody, he
conceived the idea of devoting himself to dramas
of greater pathos, force, and feeling, than those
which had been taken hold of, with a carelessness
savouring of arrogance, by his predecessor.
Further, Bellini had to write for the greatest
actress who has yet trodden the opera stage.
For Pasta, when in the prime of her power, was
La Sonnambula written. But the noble and
gifted woman, whose Norma, Semiramis,
Medea, Anne Boleyn, were creations each differing
from each in its regal pomp and majesty—could
hardly look the part of Amina;—and though
Pasta acted it, as she did everything she touched,
consummately;—the delicacy of the music, and
the compass of its melodies, were calculated to
betray the peculiar defects of her voice, which,
never agreeable by nature, was always liable to
be out of tune.—Amina, then, was one of
Pasta's less fortunate impersonations. She
placed it on the stage, however;—and with it, as
with all her other characters, a host of those
traditions and suggestions which have been
invaluable to all destined to succeed her. The
influence of Pasta—to name one instance
distinctly to be traced—throughout the long and
glorious career of Madame Grisi, has never died
out—in spite of the notoriously ephemeral
duration of singers' influences.

If Pasta brought La Sonnambula to the
Italian stage, Malibran popularised the music
and the legend in England. The critics of
Pasta's day—who had not even then thoroughly
recognised Rossini—being strong in the national
and convenient mania of liking as few things in
art as possible—would not hear the pleasant
freshness and simplicity of Bellini's music;—
they denounced it as weak and trifling.—But
how astoundingly were the Italian words "done
into English!" Of many similar versions, the
book of La Sonnambula is the most absurd
perversion. That wonderful explanatory couplet
which occurs just before the closing scene,

And this, sir, you must know, though remarkable it
        seems,
That somnambulists they're called, because of
      walking in their dreams,

is only a sample of the entire book.—Then,
Malibran was badly supported on the English
stage.—Peace to the memory of her ungainly
middle-aged opera-lover, with a poor voice
through his nose, whom she drove about the
stage like a whirlwind, and whom, by her
vehemence of action, she absolutely made seem to
act!—No matter. A pathetic drama, wholly
conducted in music and acted with energy, was
new to English play-goers; and there were an
exuberance of fire and of feeling in Malibran's
acting—a daring and a passion in her singing,
which, while she was before us, entirely carried
off her extravagances. Never has opera-queen
singing English ever transported her subjects as
she did. Hers, however, was no Swiss Amina,
but a Southern peasant—with a brilliancy in
her delight, and a reckless abandonment in her
hour of distress, that gave the part an intensity
of colour, and a sharpness of contrast, neither
"calm nor classical"—which seized us with a
resistless fascination. In the chamber scene,
where the sleeping girl unconsciously enters
with the light, Malibran was not equal to other
Aminas, who have held us fast to the situation
by their ghostly quietness.—Her despair, in the
instant ot her detection and abandonment by her
deceived lover, was terrible. She would not let
him leave her: clung to him—pursued him—
twined herself round him, and could only be
flung loose to endure her agony when the
strength of her misery would avail her no more,
and she was left dead and broken (it seemed)
for ever.—Then the walk over the mill-wheel,
which vindicates the heroine's virtue, was
protracted by her with almost a cruel relish.
She did her best to terrify her faithless lover
into the keenest spasm of fear and remorse;—as
though Sleep had brought with it the counsel of
heartily punishing him for his suspicions. All
this was to lead to that burst of ecstasy with
which she flung herself into his arms, in the
"frantic certainty of waking bliss." The final
rondo (one of the happiest expressions of joy
ever poured forth in music) was not so much
sung by Malibran—though in it she heaped vocal
change on change, triumph on triumph—as
thrown out in the irresistible abundance of a new
buoyant delight and relief. London was never
tired of Malibran's Amina; nor even when she
had grasped "the town" by another remarkable
personation, totally different—that of the
devoted Prisoner's Wife in Beethoven's Fidelio
—could the one success efface the other.—There
must have been something true and permanent
in the peasant story and the despised Italian
music after all.

The next Amina on the long list who is
worth remembering, for qualities entirely
different from those of the gifted and fervid
Spanish woman of genius—was Persiani; Grisi
having, in the interval, attempted the opera and
laid it aside.—She was never beautiful—she can
have never looked young—she in no respect
showed herself a great actress:—as a singer,
she had been born with an ungracious though
ready voice (a "bitter" voice, Mendelssohn
called it), a voice always more or less false;
nevertheless, considering the part musically,
Persiani was the best Amina among all the
Aminas who have been heard here.—This, not
only because she was accomplished to the
power of working out every phrase and note of
the music to its remotest corner, leaving
nothing for the apprehension to desire in point
of skill—not only because her command over the
graces and resources of ornament was limitless,
but from a certain conception of the sentiment
of the situations in the story, which stood her
in stead of apparent freshness or originality,
whether studied or instinctive. Great singers among