Back in Lisbon. From Bilbao to San Sebasti n, Ir n and Fuenterrab a, to spend the rest of the summer with his friends. What happened in the Amute neighborhood, regarding Gayarre, reported by Father Teófilo de Arbeiza from the lips of practitioner Pedro García, having heard it from his parents, must be from this time. They said that Juli n Gayarre had sung there, in Amute, before a wooden cross that existed in the small square in front of the Capuchin convent. That Gayarre was playing a game of mus with some friends. And that at the end of the game they asked him to sing. Que Gayarre went out to the little square, around half past ten on a summer night. And in front of the cross began the romance Spirto Gentil , from La Favorita , with a giant resonance of double vocal cords, so that he sat down to his voice in Hendaye, in the silence of the night. That the Capuchin friars came out to the windows of their cells and applauded him. And that the witnesses who heard him tell his parents are still alive.
Around this time, she rejected all the proposals that were made to her to sing in the big theaters; wanted to sing in some provinces. At the beginning of October he moved to Zaragoza. His first performance, either because of a promise or because of his father's old wish that he had already hinted at it on a visit to Pilar, Gayarre, with the temple overflowing, sang Gounod's Ave Maria and La Salve like never before, from Righini. Despite the great respect of the crowd in the sacred place, a murmur of admiration rose throughout the entire area of the immense temple. The priests of the chapter gave her a magnificent image of the Virgin, made of solid silver, with her dedication.
In the Goya theater the complete success. You had to pay an entrance fee even for being in the lounge of a nearby café. From Zaragoza to Málaga and then Granada. From here to Lisbon, to the San Carlos theater, where he triumphed again as in the previous season. The King named him a Knight of the Order of Santiago, whose insignia he gave him. It was the first time that this distinction was granted to an artist.
MEL