第14章

Fra si contrarie tempre in ghiaccio e in foco, In riso e in pianto, e fra paura e speme L'ingannatrice Donna--"Gerusal.Lib.," cant.iv.xciv.

(Between such contrarious mixtures of ice and fire, laughter and tears,--fear and hope, the deceiving dame.)Now notwithstanding the triumph both of the singer and the opera, there had been one moment in the first act, and, consequently, BEFORE the arrival of Pisani, when the scale seemed more than doubtful.It was in a chorus replete with all the peculiarities of the composer.And when the Maelstrom of Capricci whirled and foamed, and tore ear and sense through every variety of sound, the audience simultaneously recognised the hand of Pisani.Atitle had been given to the opera which had hitherto prevented all suspicion of its parentage; and the overture and opening, in which the music had been regular and sweet, had led the audience to fancy they detected the genius of their favourite Paisiello.

Long accustomed to ridicule and almost to despise the pretensions of Pisani as a composer, they now felt as if they had been unduly cheated into the applause with which they had hailed the overture and the commencing scenas.An ominous buzz circulated round the house: the singers, the orchestra,--electrically sensitive to the impression of the audience,--grew, themselves, agitated and dismayed, and failed in the energy and precision which could alone carry off the grotesqueness of the music.

There are always in every theatre many rivals to a new author and a new performer,--a party impotent while all goes well, but a dangerous ambush the instant some accident throws into confusion the march of success.A hiss arose; it was partial, it is true, but the significant silence of all applause seemed to forebode the coming moment when the displeasure would grow contagious.It was the breath that stirred the impending avalanche.At that critical moment Viola, the Siren queen, emerged for the first time from her ocean cave.As she came forward to the lamps, the novelty of her situation, the chilling apathy of the audience,--which even the sight of so singular a beauty did not at the first arouse,--the whispers of the malignant singers on the stage, the glare of the lights, and more--far more than the rest--that recent hiss, which had reached her in her concealment, all froze up her faculties and suspended her voice.And, instead of the grand invocation into which she ought rapidly to have burst, the regal Siren, retransformed into the trembling girl, stood pale and mute before the stern, cold array of those countless eyes.

At that instant, and when consciousness itself seemed about to fail her, as she turned a timid beseeching glance around the still multitude, she perceived, in a box near the stage, a countenance which at once, and like magic, produced on her mind an effect never to be analysed nor forgotten.It was one that awakened an indistinct, haunting reminiscence, as if she had seen it in those day-dreams she had been so wont from infancy to indulge.She could not withdraw her gaze from that face, and as she gazed, the awe and coldness that had before seized her, vanished like a mist from before the sun.

In the dark splendour of the eyes that met her own there was indeed so much of gentle encouragement, of benign and compassionate admiration,--so much that warmed, and animated, and nerved,--that any one, actor or orator, who has ever observed the effect that a single earnest and kindly look in the crowd that is to be addressed and won, will produce upon his mind, may readily account for the sudden and inspiriting influence which the eye and smile of the stranger exercised on the debutante.

And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the stranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of the courtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his voice gave the signal, the audience followed it by a burst of generous applause.For this stranger himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrival at Naples had divided with the new opera the gossip of the city.And then as the applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter, like a spirit from the clay, the Siren's voice poured forth its entrancing music.From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard, the whole world,--except the fairy one over with she presided.It seemed that the stranger's presence only served still more to heighten that delusion, in which the artist sees no creation without the circle of his art, she felt as if that serene brow, and those brilliant eyes, inspired her with powers never known before: and, as if searching for a language to express the strange sensations occasioned by his presence, that presence itself whispered to her the melody and the song.