and experience, and in this respect he bears a close analogy to Malibran.  Rubini’s countenance was mean, his figure awkward, and lacking in all dignity of carriage; he had no conception of taste, character, or picturesque effect.  As stolid as a wooden block in all that appertains to impersonation of character, his vocal organ was so incomparable in range and quality, his musical equipment and skill so great, that his memory is one of the greatest traditions of the lyric art.

Rubini, born at Bergamo in the year 1795, made his debut in one of the theatres of his native town, at the age of twelve, in a woman’s part.  This curious prima donna afterward sat at the door of the theatre, between two candles, holding a plate, in which the admiring public deposited their offerings to the fair beneficiaire.  His next step was playing on the violin in the orchestra between the acts of comedies, and singing in the chorus during the operatic season.  He seems to have been unnoticed, except as one of the hoi polloi of the musical rabble, till an accident attracted attention to his talent.  A drama was to be produced in which a very difficult cavatina was introduced.  The manager was at a loss for any one to sing it till Rubini proffered his services.  The fee was a trifling one, but it paved the way for an engagement in the minor parts of opera.  The details of Rubini’s early life seem to be involved in some obscurity.  He was engaged in several wandering companies as second tenor, and in 1814, Rubini then being nineteen years of age, we find him singing at Pavia for thirty-six shillings a month.  In the latter part of his career he was paid twenty thousand pounds sterling a year for his services at the St. Petersburg Imperial Opera.  This singer acquired his vocal style, which his contemporaries pronounced to be matchless, in the operas of Rossini, and was indebted to no special technical training, except that which he received through his own efforts, and the incessant practice of the lyric art in provincial companies.  A splendid musical intelligence, however, repaired the lack of early teaching, though, perhaps, a voice less perfect in itself would have fared badly through such desultory experiences.  Like so many of the great singers of the modern school, Rubini first gained his reputation in the operas of Bellini and Donizetti, and many of the tenor parts of these works were expressly composed for him.  Rubini was singing at the Scala, Milan, when Barbaja, the impressario, who had heard Bellini’s opera of “Bianca e Fernando,” at Naples, commissioned the young composer, then only twenty years old, to produce a new opera for his theatre in the Tuscan capital.  He gave him the libretto of “Il Pirata,” and Bellini, in company with Rubini (for they had become intimate friends), retired to the country.  Here the singer studied, as they were produced, the simple, touching airs which he afterward delivered on the stage with such admirable