f large stature
representing _Masetto_, and in rehearsal would often for exercise
hold a double bass out at arm's length. The force of his voice was
so prodigious that he could make himself heard above any orchestral
thunders or chorus, however gigantic. This power was rarely put
forth, but at the right time and place it was made to peal out with a
resistless volume, and his portentous notes rang through the house
like the boom of a great bell. It was said that his wife was sometimes
aroused at night by what appeared to be the fire tocsin, only to
discover that it was her recumbent husband producing these bell-like
sounds in his sleep. The vibratory power of his full voice was so great
that it was dangerous for him to sing in a greenhouse.

Like so many of the foremost artists, Lablachc shone alike in comic and
tragic parts. Though he sang successfully in all styles of music
and covered a great dramatic versatility, the parts in which he was
peculiarly great were _Leporello_ in "Don Giovanni"; the _Podesta_ in
"La Gazza Ladra"; _Geronimo_ in "Il Matrimonio Segreto"; _Caliban_ in
Halevy's "Tempest"; _Gritzonko_ in "L'Etoile du Nord"; _Henry VIII_ in
"Anna Bolena"; the _Doge_ in "Marino Faliero"; _Oroveso_ in "Norma";
and _Assur_ in "Semiramide." In thus selecting certain characters as
those in which Lablache was unapproachably great, it must be understood
that he "touched nothing which he did not adorn." It has been frankly
conceded even among the members of his own profession, where envy,
calumny, and invidious sneers so often belittle the judgment, that
Lablache never performed a character which he did not make more
difficult for those that came after him, by elevating its ideal and
grasping new possibilities in its conception.

Lablache sang in London and Paris for many years successively, and his
fame grew to colonial proportions. In 1828 his terms were forty thousand
francs and a benefit, for four months. A few years later, Laporte, of
London, paid Robert, of Paris, as much money for the mere cession of his
services for a short season. In 1852 when Lablachc had reached an age
when most singers grow dull and mechanical, he created two new types,
_Caliban_, in Halevy's opera of "The Tempest," and _Gritzonko_, in
"L'Etoile du Nord," with a vivacity, a stage knowledge, and a brilliancy
of conception as rare as they were strongly marked. He was one of the
thirty-two torch-bearers who followed Beethoven's body to its int