The young vocalist who sang it from the top of a Passy-Bourse omnibus on
that fateful day of Woerth, claimed to be a tenor, but was more correctly a
tenorino, his voice possessing far more sweetness than power. He was
already well-known and popular, for he had taken the part of Romeo in
Gounod's well-known opera based on the Shakespearean play. Like many
another singer, Victor Capoul might have become forgotten before very
long, but a curious circumstance, having nothing to do with vocalism,
diffused and perpetuated his name. He adopted a particular way of dressing
his hair, "plastering" a part of it down in a kind of semi-circle over the
forehead; and the new style "catching on" among young Parisians, the
"coiffure Capoul" eventually went round the world. It is exemplified in
certain portraits of King George V.
In those war-days Capoul sang the "Marseillaise" either at the Opera
Comique or the Theatre Lyrique; but at the Opera it was sung by Marie
Sass, then at the height of her reputation. I came in touch with her a few
years later when she was living in the Paris suburbs, and more than once,
when we both travelled to the city in the same train, I had the honour of
assisting her to alight from it--this being no very easy matter, as la
Sass was the very fattest and heaviest of all the _prime donne_ that I
have ever seen.
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