The New Margarita

But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daae, who had begun by
singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time
that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been
transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the Opera Comique
after it had been produced at the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho.
Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was
seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave
forth in the prison scene and the final trio in FAUST, which she sang
in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or
seen anything like it.

Daae revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a
radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to its
feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted
in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her
dressing-room. A few subscribers, however, protested. Why had so great
a treasure been kept from them all that time? Till then, Christine
Daae had played a good Siebel to Carlotta's rather too splendidly
material Margarita. And it had needed Carlotta's incomprehensible and
inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daae, at a
moment's warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the
program reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the subscribers
wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to Daae, when
Carlotta was taken ill? Did they know of her hidden genius? And, if
they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden? And why had she kept it
hidden? Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing
at that moment. She had often said she meant to practise alone for the
future. The whole thing was a mystery.