Page:Women of distinction.djvu/157

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.
107

The Hyers Sisters are two colored ladies, or girls, aged respectively sixteen and seventeen years, but their singing is as mature and perfect as any we have ever listened to. We have read the most favorable reports of these sisters in the California papers, but confess that we were not prepared for such an exhibition of vocal powers as they gave us last night.

Miss Anna Hyers, the eldest, is a musical phenomenon. When we tell musicians that she sings E flat above the staff as loud and as clear as an organ they will understand us when we say she is a prodigy. Jenny Lind was the recipient of world-wide fame and the most lavishly bestowed encomiums from the most musical critics in Vienna twenty 5-ears ago. Parepa Rosa, it is claimed, reached that vocal altitude last summer. But the sopranos who did it flit across the planet like angels. Several competent musicians listened to Anna Hyers last evening and unanimously pronounced her perfectly wonderful. With the greatest ease in the world, as naturally and gracefully as she breathes, she runs the scale from the low notes in the middle register to the highest notes ever reached by mortal singers. Her trills are as sweet and bird-like as those with which the "Swedish Nightingale" once entranced the world.

After a real triumph in New York City and Brooklyn the Brooklyn Daily Union had the following to say:

Not only was every inch of standing room in the Young Men's Christian Association Hall occupied, but the ante-room and the stairway were completely jammed. In spite, however, of the uncomfortable crowding every one was pleased to be present and all were delighted with the concert. The young ladies are gifted with remarkable voices and sing together with perfect harmony displaying the full compass and beauty of their voices, which are sweet and clear.

A Boston paper said of them:

We were invited, with some fifty other persons, this forenoon to hear the singing of two colored young ladies, named Anna and Emma Hyers, of San Francisco, at the Meionaon. They are aged respective!y sixteen and fourteen years, and, after a casual inspection, may be called musical prodigies. They are, without doubt, destined to occupy a high position in the musical world.