"Grand opera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see youth perspiring—especially with noble rage. It does it good, discharges the black humours of the body. If I could perspire more freely I should be singing in Grand Opera." ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... a ship's pilot, a negro pugilist, a goddess of grand opera, a noted aviator, and some scores of lesser people looked on in amazement at the third richest man in America hopping on one foot like an inebriated and agonized crane, with his other shin clasped in his hands, and making faces which an amateur photographer hastened to snap, subsequently ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... first session was for business. It was thinly attended by the citizens of Louisville, there being not more than a hundred and fifty or two hundred people present. But each succeeding session increased in numbers until on the last evening, the Grand Opera House had not seats to hold the great and sympathetic audience, which completely filled the body and galleries of the house, and left rows of men and women standing all around against the walls. The Courier-Journal gave nine columns of verbatim report of the first day and evening, together with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... didn't sing Delilah to my notion. Did she to yours?" he asked, this time with a smile that was even more interesting than the laugh. "Come over and sit with me by the spring-house and let's discuss grand opera while I eat my supper and wait until I think it is safe to ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... chivalry and romance had been nothing but foolishness. He had been enacting the unwisdom of an infatuated boy with the solemnity of a mature man. His clamor had been unprofitable, undignified, absurd—on a level with the amorous hysterics of Grand Opera, save that it had lacked the redeeming storm of contending music. The utter futility of so much wasted feeling bordered on tragedy; the need which it had expressed had been so primitive, so distressingly sincere. He was confronted ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... your tastes," she suggested. "Are you fond of grand opera, for instance? I adore it. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "that's very ignorant of you, my dear. This is a New York apartment, you know. All kinds of other fellows have been in this room ahead of me; and they've lain awake by the hour here, planning how to get married or divorced, or getting ready to write a great book or make a million dollars, or sing in grand opera or murder their child. All the things in the newspapers have been arranged in this spot where I lie! Now I'll turn out the light," she added, "and sink ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... accepted its responsibilities. To make this perfectly plain we must live up to the job! If we are to be superintendent of a coal mine "underneath the ground" we will put on our overalls and jumpers, but if we are to be manager of a grand opera house we will appear in our dress suits. The thought is obvious, but as we journey along we find many of our fellow mortals neglecting to live in line ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... sure think of you girls while we're sitting in the baldheaded pews at the Gaiety this winter gloating over the grand opera we're missing!" called Sheridan, rolling his cigar ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... must go to Italy for three years and study. She must learn the Italian language; the French; the German. Ah! then there was the acting also! Had madame histrionic power? That was indispensable for the grand opera. But in three years—perhaps four—with fine teachers her voice might be very rich, very charming. Now it was harsh, crude, unformed. Yes, it wanted the soft, mellowing airs of Italy. Where had madame been living—what was called ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of the musical season, and I attended everything from grand opera to music-hall. For the first and most obvious procedure was to assume that the Lady Allegra was a professional singer. Either that or in the very front rank of amateurs. As to the latter, I had always been more or less in with the musical set, and I knew of no one who came ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... fantastic Willing to admit it real in the sense of having some kind of existence outside his own mind, he could not admit it reasonable. In Paris, his heart sank to mere pulp before the dismal ballets at the Grand Opera and the eternal vaudeville at the old Palais Royal; but, except for them, his own Paris of the Second Empire was as extinct as that of the first Napoleon. At the galleries and exhibitions, he was racked by the effort ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... for the splendid edifices it exhibits, or for the scenes and events it has witnessed, but famous for the exploits beheld by its neighbors, and the magnificent structures by them displayed. Not that the Rue Lepelletier can boast no fine edifices, for the grand opera-house would give the loud lie to such an assertion. And then there is the Foreign Office near by, the Hotel of the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue des Capucines, and ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... everything worth seeing in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was a subscriber at the Theatre Francais. He had seen all the races at Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown and Ascot. But every now and then he and Mr. Smithson drifted from the customary ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... demurred-to relegation of Night Falls On The Gods to the category of grand opera, I have nothing to add or withdraw. Such a classification is to me as much a matter of fact as the Dresden rising or the police proclamation; but I shall not pretend that it is a matter of such fact as everybody's judgment can grapple with. People who ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... greatest literature of the English language. The simple rote songs which the children learn in the first grade, or which they hear on the phonograph, may lead through various stages of development to the enjoyment of grand opera. Pictures in which bright color predominates may be the beginning of power of appreciation which finds its fruition in a home which is decorated with reproductions ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... began, slowly and tentatively, to shape a course through life for himself. He continued to gain experience in the production of other composers' operas; he studied incessantly, and at last he hit upon the idea of writing a grand opera in the Meyerbeer style, and going to Paris with it, in the hope of getting it produced at the opera there. He was harassed by creditors; and with the daring and energy characteristic of the man whom Fate had destined to build Bayreuth, he determined to try by one bold stroke ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... a century ago Paris contained but four theatres. These were, the French Comedy, the Royal Academy of Music or Grand Opera, the Italian Comedy, where vaudevilles and comic operas were performed, and the Theatre de la Foire. The two last named were the ancestors of the present Opera Comique. "Up to 1593," says Mr. Hervey, "the actors ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Princess Lemoine lost her wonderful pearl necklace while sitting in a box at the Grand Opera in Paris. This was one of the cleverest thefts that ever baffled the police, for the necklace was never recovered. We know, however, that Jack Andrews occupied the box next to that of the princess. A coincidence—perhaps. We now come to the robbery of the Countess Ahmberg, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... swept down the streets so rapidly that it was practically impossible to save anything in its way. It reached the Grand Opera House on Mission street and in a moment had burned through the roof. The Metropolitan opera company from New York had just opened its season there and all the expensive scenery and costumes were soon reduced to ashes. From the opera house the fire leaped from building ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... III., of memories, of ghosts, of echoes, of possible evocations and revivals. It is covered with crimson and gold. The fireplaces and the ceilings are magnificent; they look like expensive "sets" at the grand opera. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... who was the Rossini of his day, was called to Paris to reform the grand opera. The French, roused by the elegant tirades of Rousseau, and the piquant witticisms of all the foreigners who visited Paris, began to conceive it possible that their music was not the finest in the world. The reform which Piccini introduced, was however, but partial, and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... growing postal business of the Republic. Among the numerous public squares and gardens of the city is the Alameda, dating from the time of Spanish rule. Six theatres of good class and other minor ones attest the play-going inclinations of the Mexicans, and a grand opera-house is in course of construction out of the national exchequer, which is designed to bear comparison with that of Paris. The Governments of Mexico, like those of Spanish-America generally, consider it ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Maeterlinck and Mascagni, but that sort of talk comes either from the outsiders or from the Great White Way crowd. When you've seen Italians not only crowd in to the free productions down here but have seen them put up good money to attend the best theatres; when you've heard them whistle grand opera at their work and save hard earned dollars to spend on it down town; when you've seen them crowd the art museums on free days and spend a half dollar to look at some private exhibition of a fellow countryman's, ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... character that Rossi assumed was Hamlet, and in this he achieved the greatest success of his Parisian engagement. The opera of Thomas had rendered the public familiar with the personage of the hero, and the magnates of the Grand Opera came to the Salle Ventadour to study this new and forcible presentment of the baritone prince, who wails and warbles through the operatic travesty of Shakespeare's masterpiece. That the impersonation will prove wholly acceptable to all Shakespearian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... with the leathery complexion and the belt to match, and the untidy hair and the big feet? I like her face. And why does she sit at a table with all those strange-looking men? And who are all the men? And who is the fur-lined grand opera tenor just ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... grand and gorgeous as the other girls'. They want to do great things, like singing in grand opera and writing immortal books and things ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... success in it being generally considered as necessary for a rounding-out of their inventive harmonic capacities; while, for the establishment of their titles to greatness, they have sought to make some grand opera ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... T**LE.—It is not true that Die Walkuere, about to be produced at the Grand Opera, in Paris, is either an adaptation, or a translation, of Walker—London. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various
... laughed, a little silvery laugh which made any memory of grand opera seem harsh and jangling. Both men turned to her in surprise. Neither of them could see any cause for mirth in all ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... to New York and played a very successful engagement at the Grand Opera House under the management of Messrs. Poole and Donnelly. Thence my route took me to all the principal cities in the Eastern, Western and Middle States, and I everywhere met with crowded houses. I then went to the Pacific Coast, against the ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... heard till from your last Paper {109a} that Henry was ever thought of for Romeo: I wonder he did not tell me this when he and I were in Paris in 1830, and used to go and see 'La Muette!' (I can hear them calling it now:) at the Grand Opera. I see that 'Queen Mary' has some while since been deposed from the Lyceum; and poor Mr. Irving descended from Shakespeare to his old Melodrama again. All this is still interesting to me down here: much more ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... contrary," interrupted Peter warmly, "Oscar Hammerstein is the ONLY impressario who can keep the pennant flying over grand opera and a ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... call for a mass-meeting, to which "all women within the boundaries of the State who believed in equal suffrage, or were interested in the fate of the pending amendment," were invited. The meeting was held on May 19, at the Grand Opera House, and the attendance exceeded the most extravagant hopes of those who had called it. If any came to scoff, they remained to participate with pride in this remarkable convention, which is yet frequently referred to as the largest and most impressive meeting ever held in the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... closing in one side of the vast quadrilateral. The effect is really grand, for these old monuments of the splendor of Samarkand stand out from a background of sky and verdure that you would seek in vain, even at the Grand Opera, if our actor does not object. But I must confess we experienced a deeper impression when, toward the northeast of the town, our arba deposited us in front of the finest of the mosques of Central Asia, which ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... the hotel lobby long enough to read a bill announcing that there would be a mass meeting that night in the "Grand Opera House" under the auspices of the Princetown Municipal Improvement League and then saw in big letters, that the meeting would be addressed by "His Honor, Judge ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... Paris, we determined to go to the Grand Opera, which we had not yet visited, and Euphemia proposed that we should take Pomona with us. The poor girl was looking wretched and woe-begone, and needed to have her mind diverted from her trouble. Jonas, ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... grounds, which are extensive and well laid out, for the old French style. We have a neighbour on our left, name unknown, who gives suppers in his garden, and concerts that really are worthy of the grand opera. Occasionally, we get a song, in a female voice, that rivals the best of Madame Malibran's. On our right lives a staid widow, whose establishment is as ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a fireman, and was detailed every evening to theatre duty at the Grand Opera House, where the Ada Howard Burlesque and Comic Opera Company was playing "Pocahontas." He had nothing to do but to stand in the first entrance and watch the border lights and see that the stand lights in the wings did not set fire to the canvas. He ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... Squintelle, Prima Donna Soprano, from Grand Opera House, Paris. Signor Bombastani, Basso Buffo, from Royal Italian Opera. Carl Schneiderine, First Baritone, of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... His energy and will were beginning to reap a good reward. He was making money, enough money to live upon; but he had still to pay back his big debt to Jacob Crayford, had still to achieve his great desire, an appearance in Grand Opera. When he arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui he brought with him, as of old, an infectious atmosphere of enthusiasm. With his iron will he combined a light heart. He had none of the childishness that surprised, and sometimes charmed, in Jacques Sennier, but much that ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... herself, "because sometime I'm going to be an opera singer. I did mean to sing in Grand Opera, and maybe I will, but if I can't do that, I'll sing in light opera, and I like to have this picture to remind me how sweet Miss ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... pure music above impure, i. e., instrumental above mixed. I dislike grand opera as a miserable mishmash of styles, compromises, and arrant ugliness. The moment the human voice intrudes in an orchestral work, my dream-world of music vanishes. Mother Church is right in banishing, from within the walls of her temples the female voice. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... by mercenary motives, proposed to Mariette that she should marry him; but she, knowing herself on the eve of an engagement at the Grand Opera, refused the offer, either because she guessed the colonel's motive, or because she saw how important her independence would be to her future fortune. For the remainder of this year, Philippe never came more than twice a month to see his mother. Where ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... New Haven's public baths consisted of a tub in the basement of a public school. I photographed the tub and projected the picture on a screen in the Grand Opera House for the consideration of the citizens. That was the beginning of an agitation for a public bath house—an agitation that was pushed until the dream became a ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... decorated the foyer of the Grand Opera in Paris; is best known as the author of the "Punishment of a Vestal Virgin" and the "Assassination of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the train arrived in Paris, and the party hastened to the lodgings which had been engaged for them. In the evening they attended the grand opera, at the invitation of Mr. Arbuckle, and the next morning proceeded to Strasburg. After a short delay, the party continued the journey, crossing the Rhine into Germany, and halting at Offenburg, a small town, where hotel ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... the first big things I saw in Paris was the opening of the Grand Opera. It was a pretty sight, the house crowded with women beautifully dressed and wearing fine jewels which showed very little, the decoration of the house being very elaborate. There was so much light and gilding that the diamonds were quite lost. The two great features of the evening were ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... changed to a view of the grand opera house and at the same moment a point of light appeared in the headpiece back of the chair. It was shaded so that the prisoner could not see it and it illumined a graduated white dial on which was a glass tube about thirty inches long, the whole resembling a barometer. Inside the ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... therefore, an anomaly to us—he was away below the surface—and few of us, during the few weeks he stayed, got to know him well enough to appreciate his real worth. Yet men who "go down to the sea in ships" have before now been known to sleep through a Grand Opera, or to see little to attract in the works of the Old Masters. And so we gather comfort for our inability to measure this man at his ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... Sarcophagus, Paris The Burial Place of Napoleon, Paris Column and Place Vendme, Paris Column of July, Paris The Pantheon, Paris The House of the Chamber of Deputies, Paris The Bourse, Paris Interior of the Grand Opera House, Paris Front of the Grand Opera House, Paris The Arc de Triomphe, Paris Arch Erected by Napoleon Near the Louvre, Paris The Church of St. Vincent de Paul, Paris The Church of St. Sulpice, Paris The Picture Gallery of Versailles ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the murderer's sacrifice compared to these? He is carefully attended, afforded every luxury, and at last, is whisked away into eternity, quickly, and, as far as possible, painlessly, with a grand opera and ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... and writing dialogue for amateur theatricals attracted the attention of Hart Conway, of the Chicago School of Acting, who promptly engaged him as assistant. At the same time, he had the privilege of seeing and studying the greatest stars and the best attractions at the Chicago Grand Opera House, where he began at the very bottom of the ladder as an usher in the gallery, balcony and main floor. Finally he became chief usher—then sold tickets for the gallery—took tickets at the main door. The late Aaron Hoffman, famous playwright, was opera glass boy at that ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... work. To Claudia also Lorraine was a splendid friend. The girls lived together at a Students' Hostel in London, and shared all their jaunts and pleasures. Claudia held a scholarship at a college of music, and was training for grand opera. With her talent and lovely face she had good prospects before her, but the Castleton strain was strong in her, as also in Morland, and it needed Lorraine's insistent urging to make her realise that it does not do only to dream your ideals, that you must ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... is the official and administrative name given in France to the grand opera. In 1570 the poet Baif established in his house a school of music, at which ballets and masquerades were given. In 1645 Mazarin brought from Italy a troupe of actors, and established them in the rue du Petit Bourbon, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the industrial centres were everywhere filled with idle men, I gathered that they were unemployed: and when I learned that the moving picture houses were full to the doors every day and that the concert halls, beer gardens, grand opera, and religious concerts were crowded to suffocation, I inferred that the country was suffering from an unparalleled depression. This diagnosis turned out to be absolutely correct. It has been freely estimated that at the time I refer ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... fortunate artists in these times may be found in the fact that Alboni, the famous contralto singer, has been engaged to sing at Madrid, at the enormous rate of $400 dollars per day, while Roger, the tenor, who used to sing at the Comic Opera at Paris, and who was transplanted to the Grand Opera to assist in the production of Meyerbeer's "Prophet," has been engaged to sing with her at the more moderate salary of $8000 a month. This is almost equal to the extravagant sum guaranteed to Jenny Lind for performing in this country. It ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... got her back on the platform, the Rube sold his farm, and within six weeks he was wearing more yellow diamonds and throwing a bigger chest than the husband of a grand opera prima donna." ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... superb opera-house, which might as well be in Naples, for all the national character it has; the court theatre, where not a word of Cas-tilian is ever heard, nor a strain of Spanish music. Even cosmopolite Paris has her grand opera sung in French, and easy-going Vienna insists that Don Juan shall make love in German. The champagny strains of Offenbach are heard in every town of Spain oftener than the ballads of the country. In Madrid there are more pilluelos who whistle Bu qui s'avance than the Hymn of Riego. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... registered against the unadulterated rubbish that is put forward as a translation when a song or operatic excerpt of foreign origin is rendered in English. Of grand opera even the Daily Telegraph is moved to say that "the translations are in most cases literary nightmares." Mere baldness might be excused, and even doggerel overlooked, but one has only to turn to almost any of the current standard translations of foreign songs to see ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... from thence—is highly remarkable in its union of vastness with compactness. The stage itself, and all its appurtenances of machinery, cellarage, height and breadth, are on a scale more like the Scala at Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke's Hospital in the Old-street- road, London. The Forty Thieves might be played here, and every thief ride his real horse, and the disguised captain bring in his ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... has small black eyes and large black whiskers; his stomach is very big, but, for shame or for what reason I know not, he hides it behind a bigger gold locket. Coralie detests him, but it has been her ambition to sing in grand opera. 'It is my career, mon cher,' she writes. Behold, sentiment is sacrificed, and we shall hear her in Wagner! She thinks that she performs a duty, and she is almost sure that it need not be very onerous. She is a sensible woman, our ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... where every law has a higher law to nullify it. He left his better half in the salubrious atmosphere, where she performed her domestic duties alone, while he was toiling down Erie railroad stock, and promulgating sweet sounds from the Grand Opera House. Bound together in conjugal sympathy, by ever-vibrating telegraph wires, what could have been more satisfactory and highly fashionable than these ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... for the right of the Christian to worship God in his own way just as quick as I would for the Atheist to enjoy music, flowers and fields. I hope to see the time when even the poor people can hear the music of the finest operas on Sunday. One grand opera with all its thrilling tones, will do more good in touching and elevating the world than ten thousand sermons on the agonies ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Room we turn to the left along the crevice, and after traveling some little distance reach The Grand Opera, a very narrow room but some forty feet in length. Chopin's Nocturne is a small grotto in the right hand wall named by the famous violinist, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... at Indianapolis November 6, 1884, and subsequently played Chicago, St. Louis, Evansville, Dayton, and Baltimore, with a week at the Grand Opera House in New York, where its season closed. It made no money, but it did a great deal toward advancing the career of Miss Maddern, who afterward became known to millions of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... all previous heights of exaltation, ranged dizzily between "front" and "back" at the Grand Opera House that evening. He was supposed to remain "out front" until the curtain went up on the second act. But the presence of the Countess in Miss Thackeray's barren, sordid little dressing-room rendered it exceedingly difficult for him to remain in ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Abe said, "but what did they know about such things in 1870? Even grand opera they gave in halls in them days, which, considering the amount of interest there was in the signing of the Peace Treaty, Mawruss, I bet yer enough people was turned away from Mirror Hall, Versailles, to more than fill five halls of the same size. As it was, Mawruss, so many people ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... August. The moon had set beyond the blue lake, and the myriad lights of heaven were hung out, as George and Gertrude alighted from their carriage in front of Colonel Harris's residence. They had been to the Grand Opera House, where they had witnessed Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," beautifully played by Julia Marlowe and her company. Between the acts, George and Gertrude talked much of the strike, of labor troubles in general, and ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... and novel things? In exploring, is not our greatest joy and delight in finding something familiar, something we have already known, something we are used to? An appreciative lover and frequenter of grand opera once said to me, "'The Barber of Seville' is my favorite, because I know I am going to have the treat of 'The Suwanee River' or 'Annie Laurie' when I go to it." There is an honest confession, such as we must all make if we are to ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... mistaken, that Mrs. Brindley was honest and frank and had doubtless told her the exact truth. But her vanity remained sore. Never before had anyone said any less of her singing than that it was wonderful, marvelous, equal to a great deal that passed for fine in grand opera. She had known that this was exaggeration, but she had not known how grossly exaggerated. Thus, this her first experience of the professional attitude was galling. Only her unusual good sense saved her from being ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... was to pay all day in town, cos there was a convenshun of the Dude Dem-mercrazey in the Grand Opera House, and the candydates had all the salloons leesed, and war busy servin out free wisky, like they've got ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... grand opera came from a different quarter. A sagacious cleric, the Abbe Perrin, heard, either at Florence or in Paris, from the company of Italian singers brought over in 1645, Peri's "Eurydice," which made a great impression upon him, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... enlivened the conversation, and certainly so melodious a human voice had never echoed near the spot. One and all agreed that the grand opera had missed a capital "first tenor" in not securing the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... seat in the dress circle of McGuire's Theatre in San Francisco; and the indictment against Singleton was for denying to another person, whose color was not stated, the full enjoyment of the accommodation of the theatre known as the Grand Opera House in New York. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... estrangement began. Dave, knowing his father's wealth, resented his lack of liberality, and he knew him too well to protest. For three months he heeded parental injunction; then a trip to New York to grand opera. Entertainment accepted must be returned. Another wine-supper, paid for by a draft on his father-and family warfare was on! The draft was paid-the family credit must not be questioned, but a house was divided against itself, and the letter David sent Dave left ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... first woke in that harbor. I felt like a heroine of grand opera surrounded by untruly beautiful painted scenery. Nothing in my four trips to Europe ever thrilled me like the queer sights and tastes and smells of those three warm weeks seven years ago. And ever since, I've panted to get back. When I stop to think about ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... Mr. Donald. They had grand opera in Seattle, and I sent her up there to hear it and having a singing teacher hear her sing 'Alice, Where Art Thou.' He said she'd be earning a thousand dollars a night in five years, Mr. Donald, if somebody in New York could train her. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... given Edward the assignment of covering the news of the theatres; he was to ascertain "coming attractions" and any other dramatic items of news interest. One Monday evening, when a multiplicity of events crowded the reportorial corps, Edward was delegated to "cover" the Grand Opera House, where Rose Coghlan was to appear in a play that had already been seen in Brooklyn, and called, therefore, for no special dramatic criticism. Yet The Eagle wanted to cover it. It so happened that Edward had made another appointment for that evening which he considered more important, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... hand, grand opera does not appeal to me. I can enthuse over the robin's song in the spring, and the sound of the summer wind rippling through the ripened wheat is not without its attractions for me; but when I hear people going into convulsions of joy over Signor Massacre's immortal opera ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... saw the most bewitching array of smart street-gowns worn by the inimitable American woman, who is as far beyond the women of every other race on earth in her selection of clothes and the way she holds up her head and her shoulders back and walks off in them as grand opera is above a hand-organ. Even the French woman does not combine the good sense with good taste as the American does. And there I found these sisters, each lovely in her own way—the pretty one listening to the raptures of the poetic one with a palpable sneer which said plainly: "I not only ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... turn, that would bring her in five hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. And then she would go to the Folies Bergere in Paris, and finally to Petersburg and Milan, and then come back to dance in the Grand Opera season, under Gus Harris, with a great international reputation, and hung with flowers and medals and diamond sun-bursts ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... "smashing the glim on a spree by lamplight"; Dick and the Captain "paying their respects to the Fair Limonadiere at the Cafe des Mille Colonnes"; Dick introduced by the Captain to a Rouge et Noir table; the same and his valet "showing fight in a Caveau"; "Life behind the Curtain of the Grand Opera, or Dick and the Squire larking with the Figurantes"; Dick and the Squire "enjoying the sport at the Combat of Animals, or Duck Lane of Paris"; Dick and Jenkins "in a Theatrical Pandemonium, or the Cafe de la Paix in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the world, a mist presently to be shot with silver and sapphire-blue, dissolved by slow enchantment until there lay revealed the plain and the shimmering ocean with its distant islands trembling in the haze. At sunset my eyes sought the mountains, mountains unreal, like glorified scenery of grand opera, with violet shadows in the wooded canon clefts, and crags of pink tourmaline and ruby against the skies. All day long in the tempered heat flowers blazed around me, insects hummed, lizards darted in and out of the terrace wall, birds flashed among the checkered ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... being first and last an emotional art; and as our emotions are refined it requires compositions of a more and more elevated character to appeal to them. Thus, we range from the bathos and vulgarity of the music hall to the glories of grand opera! ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Grand Opera, of course, but from its associations with his father he knew that that would bring him only acute misery. Gladly would he have gone to the hospitals, but they would be shut against him at this hour. He bought an evening paper, and under a shaded lamp studied the amusement ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... ridiculous garb, the Ethiopian displayed a natural barbaric dignity as he stood, offering the cards suavely to some, allowing others to pass unmolested. Every half minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible phrase akin to the jabber of car conductors and grand opera. And not only did he withhold a card this time, but it seemed to Rudolf that he received from the shining and massive black countenance a look of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... of Monday and Tuesday, that is to say, the 2d and 3d of June. On the evening of Thursday, the 5th of June, the Grand Opera at Paris was crowded for the second presentation ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... division of General Clinchamp marched down on the Rue Faubourg St. Honore, came out upon the Boulevard and took possession of the Madeleine and the Grand Opera House. While these operations had been carried on the Communists, batteries on Montmartre had thrown shells over the whole area occupied by the troops, while Mont Valerien and the other batteries facing the western side maintained a heavy fire upon ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... short. "I popped in early to-day. Matter of great importance to talk over with my heir. Wait a second, Anne. I'll be back—I say, what's the matter? You look posi-tive-ly as if you were on the point of bursting into grand opera. Going ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... this, life went on in Brussels once more—by von Bissing's stern command—as though the country were not under the heel of the invader. The theatres opened their doors; the cinemas had continuous performances; there was Grand Opera; there were exhibitions of toys, or pictures, and charitable bazaars. Ten days after the fall of Antwerp char-a-bancs packed with Belgians drove out of Brussels to visit the scenes of the battles and those shattered forts, so fatuously ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Mr. Joaquin Miller in reply to a letter, dated February 9, 1882, in reference to the behaviour of a section of the audience at Wilde's lecture on the English Renaissance at the Grand Opera House, Rochester, New York State, on February 7. It was first published in a volume called Decorative Art in America, containing unauthorised reprints of certain reviews and letters contributed by Wilde to English newspapers. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... colonels, Fifth avenue rectors and Chautauqua orators leave off. The most modest of them (barring, perhaps, a few unearthly traitors to the craft) matches the conceit of the solitary pretty girl on a slow ship. In their lofty eminence of pomposity they are challenged only by Anglican bishops and grand opera tenors. I have spoken of the danger they run of bursting. In the case of tenors it must sometimes actually happen; even the least of them swells visibly as he sings, and permanently as he ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... him alive. From the Quartier La Vilette in Paris, one heard every day of similar slaughter of innocent persons who the people fancied were Prussian spies. Under such circumstances, a trifle might become fatal. One evening at the end of August I had been hearing L'Africaine at the grand opera, and at the same time Marie Sass' delivery of the Marseillaise—she sang as though she had a hundred fine bells in her voice, but she sang the national anthem like an aria. Outside the opera-house I hailed a cab. The coachman was asleep; a man jogged him ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... The great Caruso, whose tenor voice had taken the East by storm, and whose salary was reputed to be fabulous, had come at last to San Francisco. Fremsted, almost equally famous, was singing with him in "Carmen" at the Grand Opera House. All the town turned out in broadcloth, diamonds, silks and decollete to hear them—a younger generation of San Franciscans assuming a bit uncomfortably that social importance which had not yet become genealogically ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... much about singing as tit-willows do about grand opera. But the colors of those gorgeous robes are fascinating. Aren't the curves of that roof lovely? See how the corners turn up. Exactly like the mustache of the little band master at home. Oh, look at those darling kiddies!" she suddenly exclaimed, ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... families and the witnesses had installed themselves in the rear in large armchairs, all gilding and red velvet, the ceremony was performed with extraordinary pomp. The cure of the Madeleine officiated in person; and vocalists from the Grand Opera reinforced the choir, which chanted the high mass to the accompaniment of the organs, whence came a continuous hymn of glory. All possible luxury and magnificence were displayed, as if to turn this wedding into some public ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... sonorous vowel sounds, useful for the expression of different dramatic moods, but the registers are equalized, and there is a great gain in the power and endurance of the voice, which is of immense importance to-day in grand opera. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... candidly unsuspicious nature, and since in his own mind he had seen no particular reason for infringing upon the conventions of society they had never given him so much as an unquiet thought. Certainly to dine at a restaurant or attend so public a function as grand opera with a person of the opposite sex, seemed to him a singularly harmless choice of indiscretions, and had she made a careless avowal of her intention the matter would probably have dropped at the moment from his ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow |
