Books › Famous violinists and fine violins : historical notes, anecdotes, and reminiscences, 1896 › scan 187
Scan 187
Famous violinists and fine violins : historical notes, anecdotes, and reminiscences, 1896
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 167. See the scan on archive.org.
1tion of her eighty-third birthday, in 1831, the poet Goethe addressed some verses to her.
3To properly appreciate such a woman as Mara, her life should be read in all its minutest details; but these are only to be found scattered through numerous publications, and no complete biography of this most wonderful singer exists. I have only dwelt here on her career as a youthful violinist, and her early struggles to rise from poverty and neglect to the very highest position in the musical world. It was her upright character and generosity, as much as her extraordinary talent, that enabled her to soar above the hypocrisies, jealousies, and calumnies of that rakish age; and her career, like that of Banti, Sontag, and some other great singers whom we could name, was one of a highly romantic and dramatic character.
5What became of her violin? Did she preserve it, as Madame Nilsson has preserved hers? Was it burnt in the dreadful fire at Moscow? What interest that violin would arouse if it were still to be found, and could be duly authenticated!
7Alas! it is rare indeed that any violin can be authenticated; and no one who knows anything of the life of Madame Mara, her wonderful career at the Operas of Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London, and the vicissitudes of such an active life, the energy of which was kept up to the very last, would be likely to credit any trumped-up pedigree of
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