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.--M...
[Sidenote: A MANAGER IN THE BENCH.] A complete History of the Opera would include a history of operatic music, a history of operatic dancing, a history of the chief operatic theatr...
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...
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 reach...
Great Italian Singers.--Ferri in Sweden.--Opera in Vienna.--Scenic decorations.--Singers of the Eighteenth Century.--Singers' nicknames.--Farinelli's one note. [Sidenote: QUEEN CHR...
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...
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...
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.--Vi...
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...
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...
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...
[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,...
Handel at Hamburgh.--Handel in London.--The Queen's Theatre.--The Royal Academy of Music.--Operatic Feuds.--Porpora and the Nobility's Opera. The great dates of Handel's career as...
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 of S...
[Sidenote: ROSSINI.] Innovators 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 so...
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...
The Musical Dictionary.--Account of the French Opera from the Nouvelle Héloise.--Le devin du Village.--Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Granet of Lyons. Rousseau, a man of a decidedly mu...
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: 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,...