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God's blessing on your name and memory, dear brother Jeff!
W. W.
OLD ACTORS, SINGERS, SHOWS, &C., IN NEW YORK
_Flitting mention--(with much left out)_
Seems to me I ought acknowledge my debt to actors, singers, public
speakers, conventions, and the Stage in New York, my youthful
days, from 1835 onward--say to '60 or '61--and to plays and operas
generally. (Which nudges a pretty big disquisition: of course it
should be all elaborated and penetrated more deeply--but I will here
give only some flitting mentionings of my youth.) Seems to me now when
I look back, the Italian contralto Marietta Alboni (she is living yet,
in Paris, 1891, in good condition, good voice yet, considering) with
the then prominent histrions Booth, Edwin Forrest, and Fanny Kemble
and the Italian singer Bettini, have had the deepest and most lasting
effect upon me. I should like well if Madame Alboni and the old
composer Verdi, (and Bettini the tenor, if he is living) could know
how much noble pleasure and happiness they gave me, and how deeply I
always remember them and thank them to this day. For theatricals in
literature and doubtless upon me personally, including opera, have
been of course serious factors. (The experts and musicians of my
present friends claim that the new Wagner and his pieces belong far
more truly to me, and I to them, likely. But I was fed and bred under
the Italian dispensation, and absorb'd it, and doubtless show it.)
As a young fellow, when possible I always studied a play or libretto
quite carefully over, by myself, (sometimes twice through) before
seeing it on the stage; read it the day or two days before.
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