Maretzek Italian Opera: Norma

“[A] large but not crowded audience. . . . [T]his cast is as strong as the present company can furnish, and with it we may be content. Zucchi, in her conception of the character, approaches the best standard. She is truly womanly, and displays the earnest and fierce nature of her love and the sweeping fury of her revenge, with powerful eloquence and grand vehemence. Her denunciation of Pollion [sic], in the second act, could hardly be exceeded for flashing scorn and indignant invective. Her tenderness with hwe children and Adelgisa [sic] was deep and earnest, and every shade of emotion was portrayed with singular fidelity. We recognize Carozzi Zucchi as a tragic artist of decided genius. As a singer, she has fine qualifications; her voice must once have been superb; it is fine now, though worn somewhat in the middle register. No stronger proof can be found of the loss of spontaneity in the voice, than the inability to sustain a note without the tremolo. The upper register of her voice is quite fresh and there she can make a perfect sostenuto. The tremolo was originally an added power to dramatic expression—as in passages of intense pathos or emotion, the rich pure voice was made to tremble; but now it is the fashion to shake on every note as though each and every singer enjoyed the infliction of St. Vitus’s dance. What was once a powerful effect has become almost a universal blemish; the young do it for the fashion, the old from wear and tear. Zucchi sang the music most artistically. Her recitatives were delivered with fine elocutionary power, her phrasing was strong and emphatic, and in bursts of powerful passion she was grandly impulsive and vehement. Her execution, sometimes brilliant and well-articulated, was in other places, as in Casta Diva and the duo with Adelgisa, careless and inaccurate, and her intonation was too often exceedingly unpleasant to critical ears. Still these faults, while they lower the personation from the standard of surpassing excellence, can be borne with for the sake of the grandeur of the whole conception.

            The music of Adelgisa taxes Madame Morensi’s voice beyond its natural register.  It requires execution from that part of her voice which is the least pliable, and the forcing necessary to achieve this renders her intonation very uncertain. It would be hard to imagine anything more painful than the last part of the first duo between Zucchi and Morensi, and the Cadenza with which it closed. Both ladies sang painfully false, and Mademoiselle was taken away up into regions of her voice which should never have been explored. Bad as this cadenza was, it was hardly as bad as the taste of an audience that could encore it. But something was gained, for it was much better executed the second time.  Still Morensi sang some portions charmingly, and when the rich notes of her fine voice was heard, they came out with a pathos which all acknowledged. Her acting was marked by feminine grace and passionate earnestness, and in many parts was dramatically forcible.