No one can live in the atmosphere of artistic Paris without being interested in other branches of art besides one's own. That is a charming trait of French people;--they are not a bit prejudiced when it comes to recognising forms of genius that are unfamiliar. The stupidest Parisian painter will weep over Tschaikowsky's _Pathétique Symphony_ or will wildly applaud one of the rather cumbersome Racine tragedies at the Théâtre Français. I knew Cabanel quite well (not, I hasten to add, that he would be apt to cultivate an artistic taste in anybody) and I met Jules Stewart at the Robins', whose father was the greatest collector of Fortuneys in the world. I think it was he who took me to the Loan Exhibition of the Barbizon School of Painting that year. The pictures were hung beautifully, I remember, so that one could see the stages of their development.
It was about the same time that I first heard Josephine de Reszke in Paris. In any case it was somewhere in the seventies. She was a soprano with a beautiful voice but not an attractive personality. Her neck was exceptionally short and set so far down into her shoulders that she just escaped deformity. She was very much the blonde, northern type, and still a young woman. I have heard that she did not have to sing for monetary reasons. A few years later she married a wealthy Polish banker and left the stage. At the time I first heard her the de Reszke men were not singing. It was in _Le Roi de Lahore_ that I heard her, with Lascelle. I never listened to anything more magnificently done than Lascelle's singing of the big baritone _aria_. Maurel followed him as a baritone. He was a great artist also, with possibly more intelligence in his singing than Lascelle. Lascelle relied entirely on his glorious voice; in consequence he never realised all in his career that might have been possible. In reality, if you have one great gift, you have to develop as many other gifts as possible in order to present and to protect that one properly! A little later I heard Maurel in _Iago_. (This reminds me of _Othello_ in Munich, when Vogel, the tenor, sang out of tune and nearly spoiled Maurel's work). What an actor, and what an intelligence! One felt in Maurel a man who had studied his _rôles_ from the original plots. He played a great part in costuming, but, curiously enough, he could never play parts of what I call elemental picturesqueness. His Amonasro in _Aïda_ was good, but it was a bit too clean and tidy. He looked as if he were just out of a Turkish bath, immaculate, in spite of his uncivilised guise. He could, however, play a small part as if it were the finest _rôle_ in the piece; and he had an inimitable elegance and art, even with a certain primitive romantic quality lacking. But what days those were--of what marvellous singing companies! I hear no such vocalism now, in spite of the elaborate and expensive opera that is put on each year.