enade was sung with a tambourine
accompaniment played by Lablache himself, concealed from the audience.
The opera was a great success, no little of which was due to the
neglected song which Donizetti had almost forgotten.

It was not till 1846 that Mario took the really exalted place by which
he is remembered in his art, and which even the decadence of his vocal
powers did not for a long time deprive him of. He never lost something
amateurish, but this gave him a certain distinction and fine breeding of
style, as of a gentleman who deigned to practice an art as a delightful
accomplishment. Personal charm and grace, borne out by a voice of
honeyed sweetness, fascinated the stern as well as the sentimental
critic into forgetting all his deficiencies, and no one was disposed to
reckon sharply with one so genially endowed with so much of the nobleman
in bearing, so much of the poet and painter in composition. To those who
for the first time saw Mario play such parts as _Almaviva, Gennaro_,
and _Raoul_, it was a new revelation, full of poetic feeling and
sentiment. Here his unique supremacy was manifest. He will live in the
world's memory as the best opera lover ever seen, one who out of the
insipidities and fustian of the average lyric drama could conjure up
a conception steeped in the richest colors of youth, passion, and
tenderness, and strengthened by the atmosphere of stage verity. In such
scenes as the fourth act of "Les Huguenots" and the last act of the
"Favorita" Signor Mario's singing and acting were never to be forgotten
by those that witnessed them. Intense passion and highly finished
vocal delicacy combined to make these pictures of melodious suffering
indelible.

As a singer of romances Mario has never been equaled. He could not
execute those splendid songs of the Rossinian school, in which the
feeling of the theme is expressed in a dazzling parade of roulades and
fioriture, the songs in which Rubini was matchless. But in those songs
where music tells the story of passion in broad, intelligible, ardent
phrases, and presents itself primarily as the vehicle of vehement
emotion, Mario stood ahead of all others of his age, it may be said,
indeed, of all within the memory of his age. It was for this reason that
he attained such a supremacy also on the concert stage. The choicest
songs of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Gordigiano, and Meyerbeer were
interpreted by his art with an intelligence and poetry which gave them
a n