Mrs. Billington. Having been educated in Italy, she is perfectly free from that heavy style which our language is apt to produce. Though limited in voice, her vivacity never fails to carry her through the part of a prima donna with a lively and dramatic effect. Her execution and enunciation are of the most rapid kind. In the opera of Cenerentola, she utters more than twenty syllables in a second of time, with a neatness and precision not easily surpassed. This facile manner, added to an agreeable person and clever action, render her an ornament to the stage. Her first appearance was at Venice, in an opera written for her by Peruchini; and she afterwards obtained great applause in most of the cities in Italy. In 1828 she made her début in this country as Ninetta, in La Gazza Ladra, with great success; and an engagement was offered her of considerable extent, had she consented to Italianize her name to Atonini. MADAME CARADORI, A prima donna of great excellence, but of less commanding powers than her contemporaries, Malibran and Pasta. For the spacious area of the Operahouse, her voice, though of the purest kind, was too small; and that feebleness which in this place was deemed a defect, added to that grace and delicacy which in her was a distinguished charm. How can she be better described than by the elegant pen of Lord Mount Edgecumbe, who speaks of her as be ing without a fault? 'Her voice is sweet, but not strong; her knowledge of music very great; her taste and style excellent, full of delicacy and ex'pression. In a room she is a perfect singer; her genteel and particularly modest manner, combined with a very agreeable person and countenance, 'render her a pleasing, though not a surprising 'performer.' SLIDE OR PORTAMENTO. The slide is a grace of much simplicity and beauty, evidently drawn from nature: it expresses the most tender and affectionate emotions. We hear it in those little gusts of passion which mothers use in caressing their infants; and in the language of nature, it is one of our most endearing tones. op This effect is produced by a gradual raising of the voice from any given tone to a higher, in one unbroken stream of sound. On the violin it is simply produced by sliding up the finger in close contact with the string, during an even-drawn bow. The descending grace is exactly similar, but in posite progression. The Portamento, or carriage of the voice, as the Italians term it, is an easy mode of sliding from one tone to another. Hence secondrate singers find it a convenient method of encountering those notes which lie at remote and awkward |