Operatic

Grand romantic Opera in four acts by GIUSEPPE VERDI. Text by ANTONIO GHISLANZONI. Translated into German by S. SCHANZ. English version by KENNEY. This opera owes its great populari...

In one act by WEBER. Text by HIEMER. This little opera, composed by Weber in his early youth and first represented at Dresden under the composer's own direction, for a time fell in...

In two acts by IGNAZ BRULL. Text by MOSENTHAL. Brull, born at Prossnitz in Moravia, Nov. 7th, 1846, received his musical education in Vienna and is well known as a good pianist. He...

In three acts by FLOTOW. Text after the French by W. FRIEDRICH. Flotow, who composed this little opera when at Paris in the year 1844, that is long before his Martha, had the satis...

BALLO IN MASCHERA In five acts by AUBER. Text by SCRIBE. This opera has had a curious fate, its historical background having excited resistance and given rise to scruples. The murd...

I'm fond of fire and crickets, and all that, A lobster salad, and champagne, and chat. BYRON. From this genteel place the reader must not be surprised, if I should convey him to a...

"Our Barytone I almost had forgot; * * * * * In lover's parts, his passion more to breathe, Having no heart to show, he shows his teeth."--BYRON. The Barytone of the opera is proba...

"And for the bass, the beast can only bellow; * * * * * An Ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow." BYRON. The Primo Basso is to the primo tenore what the draught horse is t...

"In short, I may, I am sure, with truth assert, that whether in the allegro or in the piano, the adagio, the largo or the forte, he never had his equal."--CONNOISSEUR. No. 130. "Fa...

"Your female singer being exceedingly capricious and wayward, and very liable to accident."--SKETCH BOOK. Every body knows what a prima donna is. She is the first lady, and this is...

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 music...

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.--Hamlet s...

PAISIELLO, PAER, CIMAROSA, MOZART. THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO. DON GIOVANNI. Nothing shows better the effect on art of the long continental wars at the end of the eighteenth and beginn...

[Sidenote: THE OPERA DURING THE CONVENTION.] A complete history of the French Opera would include something like a history of French society, if not of France generally. It would,...

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 Ind...

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 two ch...

[Sidenote: ROSSINI.] 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,...

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.--Privileges...

Ramists and Lullists.--Rameau's Letters of nobility.--His death.--Affairs of honour and love.--Sophie Arnould.--Madame Favart.--Charles Edward at the Académie. Lulli died in Paris...

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 ope...