A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Rubini, Giovanni
RUBINI, Giovanni Battista, the most celebrated of modern tenor singers, was born at Romano, near Bergamo, on April 7, 1795. The son of a professor of music, he learned the rudiments of his art from his father, and at eight years old could sing in church choirs and play the violin in an orchestra. He was then placed as a pupil with one Don Santo, a priest, organist at Adro, who however soon sent him home again, saying that he had no talent for singing. In spite of this, the father persisted in teaching his unpromising son, and allowed him, at the age of twelve, to appear in public at the Romano theatre in a woman's part. The boy was next engaged at Bergamo as chorus-singer, and to play violin solos in the entr'actes. It happened while he was here that in a new drama that was brought out, an air by Lamberti, of considerable difficulty, had to be introduced, for which it was not easy to find a singer. The song was finally entrusted to young Rubini, who acquitted himself with much applause, and was rewarded by the manager with a present of five francs. In after life he was fond of singing this song, in memory of his first triumph. His elation at the time must have been sadly damped just afterwards by the refusal of a Milan manager to engage him as chorus-singer, because of his insufficient voice.
After belonging for a time to a strolling company, and making an unsuccessful attempt at a concert tour with a violinist called Madi, he got a small engagement at Pavia, then another at Brescia for the Carnival; he next appeared at the San Mosè theatre at Venice, and lastly at Naples, where the director, Barbaja (according to Escudier), engaged him to sing with Pellegrini and Nozzari, in two operas written for him by Fioravanti. (The name of one of these operas, 'Adelson e Salvina,' is identical with that of an early work of Bellini's produced about this time.) With the public Rubini was successful, but so little does Barbaja appear to have foreseen his future greatness that he wished to part with him at the end of the first year's engagement, and only consented to retain his services at a reduced salary. Rubini preferred making some sacrifice to leaving Naples, where he was taking lessons of Nozzari, and he acceded to Barbaja's conditions, which very soon, however, had to be rescinded, owing to Rubini's brilliant successes at Rome (in 'La Gazza ladra') and at Palermo. Some time in 1819 he married Mdlle. Chomel, known at Naples as La Comelli, a singer of some contemporary celebrity, a Frenchwoman by birth, and pupil of the Paris Conservatoire.
His first appearance at Paris was on October 6, 1825, in the 'Cenerentola,' and was followed by others in 'Otello' and 'La Donna del Lago.' He was hailed unanimously as 'King of Tenors,' and began here the series of triumphs which lasted as long as his stage career. He was still bound by his engagement with Barbaja, who by this time had become aware of his worth, and only yielded him for six months to the Théâtre Italien, claiming him back at the end of that time to sing at Naples, then at Milan, and at Vienna.
Up to this time his laurels had been won in Rossini's music, on which his style was first formed, and it was not till now that he found his real element, the vehicle most congenial to his special individuality, and thanks to which he was to reach the summit of his fame. Rubini was the foundation and raison d'être of the whole phase of Italian opera that succeeded the Rossinian period. He and Bellini were said to have been born for one another, and in all probability Rubini was not more captivated by the tender, pathetic strains of Bellini, than the sensitive Bellini was influenced by Rubini's wonderful powers of expression. Such a singer is an actual source of inspiration to a composer, who hears his own ideas not only realised, but, it may be, glorified. During the whole composition of 'Il Pirata,' Rubini stayed with Bellini, singing each song as it was finished. To this fortunate companionship it cannot be doubted that we owe 'La Sonnambula' and 'I Puritani.' Donizetti, again, achieved no great success until the production of 'Anna Bolena,' his thirty-second opera, in which the tenor part was written expressly for Rubini, who achieved in it some of his greatest triumphs. It was followed by 'Lucia,' 'Lucrezia,' 'Marino Faliero,' and others, in which a like inspiration was followed by the same result.
Rubini first came to England in 1831, when freed from his engagement with Barbaja, and from that time till 1843 he divided each year between Paris and this country, singing much at concerts and provincial festivals, as well as at the Opera, and creating a furore wherever he went.
His voice—more sweet than 'robust,' save on the rare occasions when he put forth his full power—extended from E of the bass clef to B of the treble, in chest notes, besides commanding a falsetto register as far as F or even G above that. A master of every kind of florid execution, and delighting at times in its display no one seems ever to have equalled him when he turned these powers into the channel of emotional vocal expression, nor to have produced so magical an effect by the singing of a simple, pathetic melody, without ornament of any kind soever. He indulged too much in the use of head-voice, but 'so perfect is his art,' says Escudier, writing at the time, 'that the transition from one register to the other is imperceptible to the hearer.… Gifted with immense lungs, he can so control his breath as never to expend more of it than is absolutely necessary for producing the exact degree of sound he wishes. So adroitly does he conceal the artifice of respiration that it is impossible to discover when his breath renews itself, inspiration and expiration being apparently simultaneous, as if one were to fill a cup with one hand while emptying it with the other. In this manner he can deliver the longest and most drawn-out phrases without any solution of continuity.' His stage appearance was not imposing, for his figure was short and awkward, his features plain and marked with small-pox. He was no actor, and seems rarely to have even tried to act. His declamation of recitative left something to be desired. 'In concerted pieces he does not give himself the trouble of singing at all, and if he goes as far as to open his mouth, it is only to preserve the most absolute silence.' (Escudier.) 'He would walk through a good third of an opera languidly, giving the notes correctly and little more,—in a duet blending his voice intimately with that of his partner (in this he was unsurpassed); but when his own moment arrived there was no longer coldness or hesitation, but a passion, a fervour, a putting forth to the utmost of every resource of consummate vocal art and emotion, which converted the most incredulous, and satisfied those till then inclined to treat him as one whose reputation had been overrated.' (Chorley.) Some of his greatest effects were produced by an excessive use of strong contrasts between piano and forte, 'which in the last years of his reign degenerated into the alternation of a scarcely-audible whisper and a shout.' He was the earliest to use that thrill of the voice known as the vibrato (with the subsequent abuse of which we are all of us too familiar), at first as a means of emotional effect, afterwards to conceal the deterioration of the organ. To him too was originally due that species of musical sob produced by the repercussion of a prolonged note before the final cadence, which, electrifying at first as a new effect, has become one of the commonest of vocal vulgarisms. But such was his perfection of finish, such the beauty of his expression, such his thorough identification of himself, not with his dramatic impersonations but with his songs, that his hold on the public remained unweakened to the last, even when his voice was a wreck and his peculiarities had become mannerisms. He has had one great successor, very different from himself, in some of his principal parts, and numberless imitators, but no rival in the art of gathering up and expressing in one song the varied emotions of a whole opera, and to this may be due the fact that he was as much worshipped, and is as affectionately remembered by numbers who never set foot in a theatre as by the most constant of opera-goers.
In 1843 he started with Liszt on a tour through Holland and Germany, but the two separated at Berlin, and Rubini went on alone to St. Petersburg, where he created an enthusiasm verging on frenzy. By his first concert alone he realised 54,000 francs. The Emperor Nicholas made him 'Director of Singing' in the Russian dominions, and a colonel into the bargain.
In the summer of this year Rubini went to Italy, giving some representations at Vienna by the way. He returned to Russia in the winter of 1844, but finding his voice permanently affected by the climate resolved to retire from public life. He bought a property near Romano, where he passed his last years, and died, on March 3, 1854, leaving behind him one of the largest fortunes ever amassed on the operatic stage, which, unlike too many of his brother artists, he had not squandered. He seems to have been a simple, kindly-natured man, and letters of his, still extant, show that he was ready and willing to assist needy compatriots.
His imitators have brought discredit on their great original, among those who never heard him, by aping and exaggerating his mannerisms without recalling his genius, so that his name is associated with an impure and corrupt style of vocalisation. This has helped, among other influences, in bringing about the twofold reaction, in composers as well as singers, in favour of dramatic opera, and of vocal declamation rather than singing, in the sense in which that word would have been understood by Rubini.