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Chapters of Opera - Being historical and critical observations and records concerning the lyric drama in New York from its earliest days down to the present time by Henry Edward Krehbiel
page 149 of 463 (32%)
the event; but there was not. On November 26th, two days after the date,
Colonel Mapleson gave a performance of "Martha," with Mmes. Patti
and Scalchi in the principal women's parts. After the opera a rout of
supernumeraries, choristers, and other boys and men engaged for the
purpose, carrying torches, followed the diva's carriage to the Windsor
Hotel, where she was serenaded. That was all. It was so undignified and
inadequate that it provoked some of Mme. Patti's friends to arrange the
banquet in her honor which I have described in Chapter VI. Had Signor
Brignoli, who was the Edgardo to Adelina Patti's Lucia at the Academy on
November 24, 1859, been spared in life and health a few weeks longer
(Signor Brignoli died in October, 1884), his friends would probably
have urged an association of the two artists in a gala performance
of Donizetti's opera. This would have provided an appropriate and
delightful celebration, and it would not have been difficult to marshal
a number of interesting relics of the period which saw the operatic
advent of Mme. Patti, though all of them would have appeared much worse
for the wear of a quarter-century than she. Of the valiant champions
who were leading the contending operatic armies of the time, Arditi,
Maretzek, and Strakosch were still with us. The first was filling, as
of yore, the leader's chair at the Academy and doing yeoman's service
in the unobtrusive and modest manner which always characterized him;
the second, withdrawn from all connection with operatic management, was
watching the boiling and bubbling of the caldron with amused interest
and spicing his comments with capitally told reminiscences of opera a
generation before; the third was still chasing the fickle goddess with
fugitive essays as impresario. There were even remains of the critics of
those days still active in the world of letters--Richard Grant White,
for instance, and George William Curtis, one of my predecessors on The
Tribune--and they would undoubtedly have grown young again and been
warmed into enthusiastic utterance by eager memories of the dainty
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