I am going to give a concert on the 25th of December, with the assistance of Baillot, Paganiniʼs rival, and Brod, the celebrated hautbois player. I am going to play my F minor Concerto, and the variations in B major. Of the latter, I received from Cassel, a few days ago, a review, ten pages long, by an enthusiastic German, who, after an exhaustive preface, analyzed every bar. He does not consider them variations according to the orthodox style, but a picture of the imagination. He says of the second variation that Don Juan and Leporello are running; of the third that he is fondling Zerline to the disgust of Masetto. In the D flat major in the fifth bar of the Adagio he can perceive Don Juan kissing Zerline. A comical conceit of the reviewerʼs, who is very anxious that the composition should be printed in the _Revue Musicale_ (a paper belonging to his son-in-law Fétis.)
The good Hiller, a very talented young man, and a pupil of Hummel, gave a concert the day before yesterday, which produced a great effect. One of his own symphonies was received with loud applause. He has made Beethoven his model, and his work is full of poetry and enthusiasm. He was sufficiently interested in me to tell Fétisʼs father-in-law that he would do me more harm than good by that notice of his. But to return to my concert: I am not only to play the F minor Concerto and the variations, but perform, with Kalkbrenner, his duet, “Marche suivie dʼune Polonaise,” for two pianos, with accompaniments for four pianos. Is not that a wild idea? One of the pianos is very large and is for Kalkbrenner, another very small one (a so-called monochord) is intended for me. On the other large ones, which make as much noise as an orchestra, Hiller, Osborne, Stamaty, and Sowinski are to play. Norblin, Vidal, and the famous viola player, Urhan, will also assist. The most difficult matter of all was to find a vocalist. Rossini would willingly have helped me to obtain one if he had been allowed to, but Robert, the second director of the Italian Opera, objected. He declared that if it were known he had obliged me he should be besieged by hundreds of similar applications.
As to the opera, I must say I never heard such a fine performance as last week, when the “Barbiere” was given, with Lablache, Rubini, and Malibran-Garcia. There was, too, an excellent rendering of “Otello,” with Rubini, Lablache, and Pasta; also the “Italiana Algeri.” Paris has, in this respect, never offered so many attractions as now. You can have no idea of Lablache. They say that Pastaʼs voice has rather gone off, but I never in my life heard such heavenly singing as hers. Malibranʼs wonderful voice has a compass of three octaves, and she is in her style unique and fascinating. Rubini, a capital tenor, makes no end of _roulades_, and often too many _coloratures_, but by his incessant recourse to the trill and _tremolo_, he wins enormous applause. His mezza-voce is incomparable. A certain Schröder-Devrient has just come out, but she does not make such a _furore_ here as in Germany. Signora Malibran gave “Otello;” Schröder-Devrient, Desdemona. Malibran is a much smaller woman than the German singer, and people thought, several times, that Desdemona would strangle Othello. This was a very expensive performance. I paid twenty-four francs for my place, just to see Malibran as the Moor, and not a very extraordinary impersonation either. The orchestra was first-rate, but the appointments of the Italian Opera are nothing to those of “LʼAcadémie Royale.”