Wood is, if I mistake not, the first
Englishwoman who has achieved that distinction without a certificate of
character from Italy. Even Billington was not thought worthy of our opera
stage until she had delighted the audiences of San Carlo, the Scala, and
the Fenice. Mrs. Wood, on the other hand, is our own, and wholly our own;
she has not basked in the suns of Naples, nor breathed the musical
atmosphere of Venice or Milan; yet I, who am an old stager, like Iago,
"nothing if not critical," and have heard every _prima donna_ from
Billington down to this present writing, have seldom uttered any _brava_
with more unction than when listening to Mrs. Wood's _Angelina_ and
_Ottavia_.
My intent is to hail Mrs. Wood's appearance and success at the opera as an
_auspicium melioris aevi_, as the dawn of a coming day, when the staple
commodity of our Italian opera shall be furnished by our own island,
instead of being imported from a country which, I boldly assert, does not
produce either superior voices, or better educated musicians than our
own--nay, so well educated. Has Italy ever furnished us with such a tenor
singer as Braham; the Braham that I am, _per mia disgrazia_, qualified, by
age, to remember; the Braham of 1801? Has Italy ever sent us a _prima
donna_, considered as a singer only, like Billington? On the contrary, do
we not, in gauging our progressive musical importations, subject them to
immediate comparison with Billington and Braham? And who, except Catalani
and Fodor, Siboni and Donzelli, would bear that comparison? The French,
the Germans, cultivate assiduously native talent, and we import, now a
Fodor, and now a Sontag; we English alone persist in the sapient policy of
making the exclusion of the native artist from the highest point to which
his ambition could be directed, the rule; and his admission, the exception
which the grammarians say (though my grammar-master never could drive it
into my head why) proves the rule.
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