Читать книгу Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences онлайн

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Guilbert has no singing voice, and yet she sings. Her singing voice is small ... ever so small. Yet clear, distinct, expressive and, in the lowest register, most deep and thrilling. How little mere “voice” matters! Only consider. Here, on one hand, we have Madame Clara Butt with, I suppose, one of the most wonderful organs that this world, or any other world, has ever listened to. But would you walk five miles to hear her sing? I wouldn’t. You, I hope and believe, wouldn’t either. Would you walk five miles to hear Blanche Marchesi sing—Blanche Marchesi, whose voice, as mere voice, is like a hundred other voices? Of course you would. Voice matters little. It is the temperament, the intellect, behind the ssss1 voice that counts. And the eternal struggle that Yvette Guilbert has had to undergo has been the struggle to make her comparatively small voice express the wonderful things of her imagination.

A gesture. A look. An inflection. Two paces on the platform. A little cry ... a little cry of dismay. A superb and beautiful signal that tells us the Mother of God is big with a Child. A tiny silence. A moment of jauntiness. Something arch and irresistible. Something tragic that makes you clench your fists....