The duet is long, as Margaret had often thought when studying it, but
now she was almost startled because it seemed to her so soon that she
found herself once more embracing Rigoletto and uttering a very high
note at the same time. Very vaguely she wondered whether the far-off
person who had been singing for her had not left out something, and if
so, why there had been no hitch. Then came the thunder of applause
again, not in greeting now, but in praise of her, long-drawn,
tremendous, rising and bursting and falling, like the breakers on an
ocean beach.
'Brava! brava!' yelled Rigoletto in her ear; but she could hardly hear
him for the noise.
She pressed his hand almost affectionately as she courtesied to the
audience. If she could have thought at all, she would have remembered
how Madame Bonanni had once told her that in moments of great success
everybody embraces everybody else on the stage. But she could not think
of anything. She was not frightened, but she was dazed; she felt the
tide of triumph rising round her heart, and upwards towards her throat,
like something real that was going to choke her with delight. The time
while she had been singing had seemed short; the seconds during which
the applause lasted seemed very long, but the roar sounded sweeter than
anything had ever sounded to her before that day.
It ceased presently, and Margaret heard from the house that deep-drawn
breath just after the applause ended, which tells that an audience is
in haste for more and is anticipating interest or pleasure. The
conductor's baton rose again and Margaret sang her little scene with
the maid, and the few bars of soliloquy that follow, and presently she
was launched in the great duet with the Duke, who had stolen forward to
throw himself and his high note at her feet with such an air of real
devotion, that the elderly woman of the world who admired him felt
herself turning green with jealousy in the gloom of her box, and almost
cried out at him.
He took his full share of the tremendous applause that broke out at the
end, almost before the lovers had sung the last note of their parts,
but the public made it clear enough that most of it was for Margaret,
by yelling out, 'Brava, la Cordova!' again and again. The tenor was led
off through the house by the maid at last, and Margaret was left to
sing 'Caro nome' alone. Whatever may be said of Rigoletto as a
composition--and out of Italy it was looked upon as a failure at
first--it is certainly an opera which of all others gives a lyric
soprano a chance of showing what she can do at her first appearance.