Category: History - European
It has often been said, and notably, by J. J. Rousseau, and after him, with characteristic exaggeration, by R. Wagner, that "Opera" does not mean so much a musical work, as a musical, poetical, and spectacular work all at once; that "Opera" in fact, is "the work," _par excelle...
It has often been said, and notably, by J. J. Rousseau, and after him, with characteristic exaggeration, by R. Wagner, that "Opera" does not mean so much a musical work, as a mu...
8. CHAPTER II.French Opera not founded by Lulli.--Lulli's elevation from the kitchen to the orchestra.--Lulli, M. de Pourceaugnac, and Louis XIV.--Buffoonery rewarded.--A disreputable tenor.-...
9. CHAPTER III.Opera admired for its unintelligibility.--The use of words in opera.--An inquisitive amateur.--New version of a chorus in Robert le Diable.--Strange readings of the _Credo_ by t...
10. CHAPTER IV.The Ballets of Versailles.--Louis XIV. astonished at his own importance.--Louis retires from the stage; congratulations addressed to him on the subject; he re-appears.--Privileg...
11. CHAPTER V.Operatic Feuds.--Objections to Nose-pulling.--Arsinoe.--Camilla and the Boar.--Steele on insanity.--Handel and Clayton.--Nicolini and the lion.--Rinaldo and the sparrows.--Hamle...
12. CHAPTER VI.1734, when in commencing the season at the King's Theatre with a new company, he had to contend against the "Nobility's Opera" just opened at the Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields...
13. CHAPTER VII.Handel, by his great musical genius, conferred a two-fold benefit on the country of his adoption. He endowed it with a series of Oratorios which stand alone in their grandeur, f...
14. CHAPTER VIII.Lulli died in Paris, March 22nd, 1687, at the age of fifty-four. In beating time with his walking stick during the performance of a _Te Deum_ which he had composed to celebrate...
15. CHAPTER IX.Rousseau, a man of a decidedly musical organisation, who, during his residence in Italy, learnt, as he tells us in the _Confessions_, to love the music of Italy; who wrote so ea...
16. CHAPTER X.Gluck at Vienna.--Iphigenia in Aulis.--A rehearsal at Sophie Arnould's.--Gluck and Vestris.--Piccinni in Italy.--Piccinni in Paris.--The two Iphigenias.--Iphigenia in Champagne....
17. CHAPTER XI.18. CHAPTER XIV.19. CHAPTER XV.20. CHAPTER XVII.21. CHAPTER XI.Hitherto I have been obliged to trace the origin and progress of the Opera in various parts of Europe. At present there is one Opera for all the world, that is to say, the same...
22. CHAPTER XII.A few months before Gluck left Paris for the last time, an insurrection broke out at the Opera. The revolutionary spirit was abroad in Paris. The success of the American War of...
23. CHAPTER XIII.A complete history of the French Opera would include something like a history of French society, if not of France generally. It would, at least, show the effect of the great pol...
24. CHAPTER XIV.Nothing shows better the effect on art of the long continental wars at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century than the fact that Mozart's two greatest...
25. CHAPTER XV.A complete History of the Opera would include a history of operatic music, a history of operatic dancing, a history of the chief operatic theatres, and a history of operatic soc...
26. CHAPTER XVIInnovators in art, whether corrupters or improvers, are always sure to meet with opposition from a certain number of persons who have formed their tastes in some particular styl...
27. CHAPTER XVII.The History of the Opera, under the Consulate and the Empire, is perhaps more remarkable in connexion with political than with musical events. Few persons at present know much o...
28. CHAPTER XVIII.Sigismondi, the librarian of the Neapolitan Conservatory, had a horror of Rossini's music, and took care that all his printed works in the library should be placed beyond the re...
29. CHAPTER XIX.Bellini and Donizetti were contemporaries of Rossini; so were Paisiello and Cimarosa; so are M. Verdi and M. Meyerbeer; but Rossini has outlived most of them, and will certainly...
30. ii. 77, 78;Louis XIV., a great actor, i. 73; in the habit of singing and dancing in the court ballets, 74; retires from the stage, 74; returns to it, 75; the various characters assumed by...