between two candles, holding a plate, in which the admiring public
deposited their offerings to the fair _bénéficiaire_. His next step was
playing on the violin in the orchestra between the acts of comedies, and
singing in the chorus during the operatic season. He seems to have been
unnoticed, except as one of the _hoi polloi_ of the musical rabble,
till an accident attracted attention to his talent. A drama was to be
produced in which a very difficult cavatina was introduced. The manager
was at a loss for any one to sing it till Rubini proffered his services.
The fee was a trifling one, but it paved the way for an engagement in
the minor parts of opera. The details of Rubini's early life seem to
be involved in some obscurity. He was engaged in several wandering
companies as second tenor, and in 1814, Rubini then being nineteen years
of age, we find him singing at Pavia for thirty-six shillings a month.
In the latter part of his career he was paid twenty thousand pounds
sterling a year for his services at the St. Petersburg Imperial
Opera. This singer acquired his vocal style, which his contemporaries
pronounced to be matchless, in the operas of Rossini, and was indebted
to no special technical training, except that which he received
through his own efforts, and the incessant practice of the lyric art in
provincial companies. A splendid musical intelligence, however, repaired
the lack of early teaching, though, perhaps, a voice less perfect in
itself would have fared badly through such desultory experiences. Like
so many of the great singers of the modern school, Rubini first gained
his reputation in the operas of Bellini and Donizetti, and many of the
tenor parts of these works were expressly composed for him. Rubini was
singing at the Scala, Milan, when Barbaja, the _impressario_, who had
heard Bellini's opera of "Bianca e Fernando," at Naples, commissioned
the young composer, then only twenty years old, to produce a new opera
for his theatre in the Tuscan capital. He gave him the libretto of
"Il Pirata," and Bellini, in company with Rubini (for they had become