The Argosy — page 75: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

62 Nero as a Musician. Hercules Furens. As the “mad Hercules” he particularly excelled, and his vein was pre-eminently that of ecstasy and passion. He had made his début as a singer at Naples in the third year of his reign, and from that day forward persevered in his odd and self-imposed voca- tion with the varying success which attends all masters of the craft. The story of his début reads like romance, yet every word of it is perfect history. In order to give pomp and circumstance to the occasion, and probably with a view of stimulating public curiosity, he entered Naples, where the event was to take place, dressed as Apollo, playing his lyre, and surrounded by a chorus of singers and instrumentalists, who chanted hymns and triumphal odes as they rode along. ‘Trains of courtiers and attendants followed. ‘There were a thousand carriages in all. The horses and mules were harnessed with silver, and the drivers and muleteers were clad in the costliest cloth from the looms of Canusium. For nearly a week, day after day, did Nero sustain various characters at the theatre. The opening day was attended with a remarkable circumstance, which many took for an omen of the gods, angry that the monarch of the world should stoop to such unworthy pursuits. For scarcely had he stepped on the stage to commence the introductory scena of the tragedy, than the shock of an earthquake was felt, the benches began to sway about, and the stage to totter almost to falling. Such, however, was the terror in which the Emperor was held that the frightened audience, eager as they were to escape from the building, chose rather to face the raging of nature than Nero’s displeasure, and maintained their seats and their atten- tion as best they might during the whole time the earthquake lasted. As a conscientious singer and a laborious, painstaking artist, this royal virtuoso seems to have been unrivalled. We read that during a ‘professional engagement” (if such a term is applicable to his case), even should it last for a week or more, he would sing incessantly, sometimes at two or three performances a day, never allowing his voice a moment’s rest. He generally took up his lodging within the precincts of the theatre itself, never leaving it — except to visit the public baths, hastening back from thence with all speed to the theatre again, and commonly dining in the middle of the orchestra. Such diligence did he use to improve his voice that it was his constant habit to sit up with his voice-trainer, Terpuus, night after night till the small hours of the morning, practising his arias and roulades for the following day. He slept with plates of lead on his chest, to correct unsteadiness of breathing, and give him the power of sustaining his notes in equal volume. He would also abstain from food for days together, in order to purify his vocal tone, often denying himself fruit and sweet pastry, of which he was enormously fond, because they were held to be prejudicial to singing. CORNICMOOOKS CO