Part of the description could come straight from Du Maurier’s three-page account of the Trilby version: “Then comes the slow movement, the sudden adagio with its capricious ornaments the mellow, powerful, deep chest notes are like the pealing of great golden bells, with a light little pearl shower tinkling round - drops from the upper fringe of her grand voice as she shakes it there is not a sign of effort, of difficulty overcome. Probably Onegin herself supplied the handful of Italian words - I guess that because they seem to be plucked (with no great attention to grammar) from two lines she sang in one of her favorite roles, Amneris. They don’t seem to have published the arrangement, and I suspect there was never a real score - likelier it was just a marked-up copy of the piano piece. 29 is actually not one of the hardest Chopin pieces to play, and by slowing and abridging it somewhat, dividing the melodic material between voice (for the parts within human range) and piano (the higher bits), Onegin and her pianist Franz Dorfmüller figured out a perfectly singable version.
What would it take to make a vocal arrangement of the Impromptu? Sigrid Onegin (1889-1943, a world-renowned Wagnerian and Verdian) decided to give it a shot. There’s also Trilby, FL 33593, so named one year after the novel’s appearance, population 419 as of the last census.Īnd then there’s this week’s record. Duval’s The Secrets of Svengali (1922), a peculiar but worthwhile compendium of good vocal advice, opera gossip, critical put-downs, and pre-scientific nonsense about physical aspects of singing, cast in the form of counsel from an imaginary Svengali to a new Trilby.
Trilby had its own influence while its vogue lasted: there’s a Trilby hat (popularized via a stage adaptation of the book) there’s a certain Phantom of the Opera written 16 years later partly in imitation and there’s J.H. And often, as in the novel, seen as exercising a baleful or domineering influence over the protégé. People who have no idea of Du Maurier or singing know what “a Svengali” means: an athlete’s trainer, a politician’s adviser, an actor’s mentor, who is seen as providing the brains for someone else’s talent.
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