quote the words of an able critic: "There have been few such examples
of terrible courtly tragedy in Italian opera as Signor Ronconi's
_Chevreuse_, the polished demeanor of his earlier scenes giving a
fearful force of contrast to the latter ones when the torrent of pent-up
passion nears the precipice. In spite of the discrepancy between all our
ideas of serious and sentimental music and the old French dresses, which
we are accustomed to associate with the _Dorantes_ and _Alcestes_ of
Molière's dramas, the terror of the last scene when (between his teeth
almost) the great artist uttered the line--'_Suir uscio tremendo lo
sguardo figgiamo_'--clutching the while the weak and guilty woman by
the wrist, as he dragged her to the door behind which her falsity was
screened, was something fearful, a sound to chill the blood, a sight to
stop the breath." This writer, in describing his performance of the part
of the _Doge_ in Verdi's "I Due Foscari," thus characterizes the last
act when the Venetian chief refuses to pardon his own son for the crime
of treason, faithful to Venice against his agonized affections as a
father: "He looked sad, weak, weary, leaned back as if himself ready to
give up the ghost, but, when the woman after the allotted bars of noise
began again her second-time agony, it was wondrous to see how the old
sovereign turned in his chair, with the regal endurance of one who says
'I must endure to the end,' and again gathered his own misery into his
old father's heart, and shut it up close till the woman ended. Unable to
grant her petition, unable to free his son, the old man when left alone
could only rave till his heart broke. Signor Ronconi's _Doge_ is not to
be forgotten by those who do not regard art as a toy, or the singer's
art as something entirely distinct from dramatic truth."

His performance of the quack doctor _Dulcamara_, in "L'Elisir d'Amore,"
was no less amazing as a piece of humorous acting, a creation matched
by that of the haggard, starveling poet in "Matilda di Shabran" and