Manuel Garcia (1775-1832): Chronicle of the Life of a bel canto Tenor at the Dawn of Romanticism.(Review)

By James Radomski. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. [xiv, 367 p. ISBN 0-19-816373-8. $80.]

One of the recent trends in musicological research, especially in opera studies, is a heightened interest in the history of performance. As scholars have recognized the degree to which the text anti music of an opera can vary depending on the circumstances of a production, the role of performers in shaping a work's composition and reception is looming ever larger in music history. The study of performance can tell us much about the tastes of audiences, the kinds of careers pursued by musicians, and the operation of theaters, to name only three of the various social and economic factors affecting opera history.

By these criteria, Manuel Garcia certainly merits investigation. A tenor, composer, and influential teacher whose career spanned four decades and covered a number of cities throughout Europe and North America, Garcia easily qualifies as one of the most prominent singers of the early nineteenth century. Among other achievements, he created the role of Count Almaviva in Gioachino Rossini's II barbiere di Siviglia, promoted Italian opera in America, taught a number of prominent singers, and composed stage works in Spanish, Italian, and French James Radomski's book, a revision of his dissertation (The Life and Works of Manuel del Populo Vicente Garcia [1775- 1832]: Italian, French, and Spanish Opera in Early Nineteenth-Century Romanticism [University of California, Los Angeles, 1992]), is the first large-scale study devoted to the Spanish tenor.

Drawing heavily on archival sources and contemporary reviews, Radomski presents a richly detailed study of Garcia's life. In doing so, he provides a solid basis for future research by establishing basic factual matters (such as the dates and itineraries of Garcia's journeys in Europe and America), and he also presents a nuanced, balanced view of the singer's character. Earlier studies of his daughter Maria Malibran, for instance, have painted a rather one-sided portrait of Garcia as a cruel father. While Radomski does not deny that Garcia was a demanding teacher of his daughter and reacted harshly to her marriage to Eugene Malibran, he also demonstrates that the charge of incest, advanced by April Fitzlyon in her book Maria Malibran: Diva of the Romantic Age (London: Souvenir Press, 1987), rests on flimsy evidence. Furthermore, he presents documentation that suggests Malibran was reconciled with her father before his death.

An especially valuable part of the book is Radomski's examination of Garcia as a teacher. Instead of relying solely on Garcia's treatise on singing, which is "disarmingly simple" (p. 262), he draws on an array of sources, primarily press notices and accounts of students, to give the reader a more detailed view of Garcia's methods. Radomski rightly places emphasis on Garcia's ability to improvise, and he gives a fascinating description of a lesson with the French tenor Adolphe Nourrit: when Nourrit rehearsed ...