"Opera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mauling and talking to him in Irish and the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera. Such growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone that has nothing better to do ought to write a letter pro bono publico to the papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that. Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the hydrophobia ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... they named both the towns and the canvas buildings in accordance with their bright hopes for the morrow, rather than with reference to the mean facts of the day. One of these towns, which when twenty-four hours old boasted of six saloons, a "court-house," and an "opera house," was overwhelmed by early disaster. The third day of its life a whirlwind came along and took off the opera house and half the saloons; and the following evening lawless men nearly finished the work of the elements. ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... magical city that I have seen, but have never trod. It will vanish about six o'clock in the morning, and there will be only common streets, full of common people. Of course," and here she closed the window and leisurely removed her opera cloak, "of course, this is only dreaming, but to dream waking, or to dream sleeping, is very pleasant. In dreams we can have men as we like them, and women as we want them, and make all ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... to make footholes in different positions up the wall. It was desperately hard and long work, easy as it may sound in description—especially when I had to hold on by the top of the wall, with my flat opera hat (as we used to call it in those days) laid, as a guard, between my hand and the glass, while I cleared a way through the sharp bottle-ends for my other hand and my knees. This done, my great difficulty was vanquished; and ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... in stray passengers told us that we were approaching the vocal influence of the name Androscoggin. People talked as if, instead of ivory ring or coral rattle to develop their infantile teeth, they had bitten upon pine knots. Voices were resinous and astringent. An opera, with a chorus drummed up in those regions, could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... or pawned all my valuables. I might pawn my dress suit and studs, but if I did, I couldn't go out to dinner if I were asked, and that is always a saving. I cannot get a place in an opera company, because my voice has not been sufficiently trained. There always is something to prevent my success, no matter ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... and five hundred pounds to whom?—why, to the accomplice Higginson. The minor bequests the Q.C. regarded as ingenious inventions, pure play of fancy, 'intended to give artistic verisimilitude,' as Pooh-Bah says in the opera, 'to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.' The fads, it was true, were known fads of Mr. Ashurst's: but what sort of fads? Bimetallism? Anglo-Israel? No, braces and shoe-horns—clearly the kind that would best be known to a courier like Higginson, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... the theater that evening, the man and his sweetheart, and by chance stumbled upon a well-staged comic opera, with good music and brilliant and picturesque although occasionally scanty costumes. On the way down the son told the mother of how in Detroit, way back in the sixties, he had seen for the first time a theatrical performance. He told her what she had forgotten, how she had induced his father ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... a kitchen-garden, enclosed on the sides by hedges. At the back, espaliers. Vegetables and flowers of all kinds. Cold frames. Among the fruit trees, an upright pole, rigged in an old frock-coat, pair of trousers, and opera hat, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... parted from him that evening with a half expressed understanding that he was to reappear beneath her window before day-light; and she had pictured to herself a charming balcony-scene, such as she had beheld in Italian opera. Accordingly, she had attired herself in a becoming negligee, and had spent the fore part of the night somewhat restlessly, occasionally emerging on the veranda and gazing down into the perfumed gloom of the garden. At length ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... else express admiration for Wagner music than he would offer to show that all the good things in the works of the famous German were merely so many paraphrased plagiarisms from the compositions of other men. He possessed a phenomenal memory. He seemed to remember every note in every opera, symphony, oratorio, or concerto that anybody ever mentioned, and there was not a piece of music by a celebrated man but he was ready to "prove" that it had been stolen from ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... gladness; he could hardly keep from running. He declaimed aloud bits of Shakespeare, tag ends of poems; he snapped his fingers and flung out his arms in sheer excess of enthusiasm. He smiled, threw back his head, even made faces at the passersby. He boomed into a solo from an opera, and kicked his foot at a cigar stub on the sidewalk. And had anybody wished to observe when he reached his house, the spectacle would have presented itself of a caricature, funny-paper barn-stormer tramping merrily up the rattling ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... enervating atmosphere, King's Cobb has its fine traditions of a sturdy independence, and a slashing history withal; and its aspect is as picturesque as that of an opera bouffe fishing-harbour. Then, too, its High Street, as well as its meandering rivulets of low streets, is rich in buildings, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... gentleman, Laura, and we are only common people. My father can't hand a lady in and out of a carriage as Lord Chesterfield can, nor can he make so grand a bow, nor does he put on evening dress for a late dinner, and we never go to the opera nor to the theatre, and know nothing of polite society, nor can we tell exactly whom our great-great-grandfather sprang from. I tell you, there is a gulf between us and that Englishman, wider than the one young Curtius ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... must not overlook my furnishing goods friend. He had been trained for an opera singer and would have made a success of it had he kept up with that profession. His business, however, prospered so well that he could never go and look the prompter in the face. He had a rich, full, deep voice which, when he sang the Holy City, made the chandeliers fairly ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... nothing like a good folk-opera for wholesome fun, and the boy who can turn out a rollicking folk-opera for old and young is Percy MacKaye. His latest is a riot from start to finish. You can buy it in book form, published by Knopf. Just ask for "Rip Van Winkle" and ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... in the Opera House and this Mr. Brubaker was to give me fifty dollars for my lecture that night. After I had spoken I was asked to go into a noted saloon, Pete Weise's place. Mr. Brubaker said: "If you go I will not give you your ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... may be a person of finish and wide culture. You may find that she insists on her cold tub every morning, and is scandalised by your offer of hot water in it. She has seen Salome as a play and heard Salome as an opera. She has seen plays by G.B.S. both in Berlin and London. She does not care to see Shakespeare in London, because, as she tells you, the English know nothing about him. Besides, he could not sound as well in English as in German. She has read Carlyle, and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... energetic assistants, was the soul of the enterprise, and the real founder of St. Louis. He was one of that stock of Frenchmen who put the imprint of their nation, never to be effaced, upon the map of North America—a kind of Frenchman unspeakably different from those who figured in the comic opera and the masquerade ball of the late corrupt and effeminating empire. He was a genial and generous man, who rewarded his followers bountifully, and took the lead in every service of difficulty and danger. While on a visit to New Orleans he died of one of the diseases of the country, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... that conversation took place, Lord Chandos went to the opera, where Leone was playing "Anne Boleyn." He waited until she came out and was seated in her carriage; then he stood for a few moments leaning over the carriage door ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... most brisk; when down the thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless streams of indolent and voluptuous life; when the upper class spend, and the middle class make; when the ball-room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the School for Scandal; when the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers and fiddlers—creatures hatched from gold, as the dung-flies from the dung-swarm, and buzz, and fatten, round the hide of the gentle Public In the cant phase, it was "the London season." And happy, take it altogether, happy above the rest of the year, even for the hapless, is that period ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... broke my engagement to Metcalfe Hussey because he insisted on going over to join the English regiment his grandfather used to belong to. I've no patience with sentimentality." She took the check and screwed it into a small gold case. "I'm dining with my bandage-rolling aunt and going on to the opera. Thank goodness, the music will drown her war talk. Good-by." She nodded here and there and left, to be driven home with her adipose ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... He'd make my London a Paradise, which is a prospect that's perfectly scrumptious. But oh! he is big, with the funniest rig; a Titan who, if he should tumble, Might squelch me as flat as an opera-hat, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... doubly agreeable to the beauty and her chaperon, and finally offered them a box at the opera for the next evening, and when it was accepted ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... loneliness might these silent windows not conceal? And every French city is much the same; one notices in them all the subtle lack of youth, and the animation of the great squares in contrast to the somber loneliness of streets and quarters which once were alive and gay. At the Place de l'Opera in Paris, the whirlpool of Parisian life is still turning, but the great streets leading away from the Place de l'Etoile are quiet. Young and old, laborer and shopkeeper, boulevardier and apache are far ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... learn to appreciate the sinuous beauties of the cabaret dancer, and must train himself to take no offence when he sees shimmering wines tilted down white throats. He must train himself to many things, just as he trains himself to classical music and grand opera. To do these things he must forget, as much as he can, the sweet melodies and the sweeter women who are sinking into oblivion together. He must accept life as a Grand Piano tuned by a new sort of Tuning Master, and unless he can dance to its music he is a misfit. ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... affair. Being called upon for a speech I made a few remarks, which were well received, and as the gentlemen present expressed a desire to have a larger meeting I consented to speak on the following evening at the opera house. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... evening, after the opera. The company was composed of several of our young nobility, and an equal number of female performers and other ladies of the same reputation. They almost immediately broke into tete-a-tetes, and of consequence one of the ladies addressed herself ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... convention was held in Boyd's Opera House, Omaha, September 26, 27, 28. The Bee was ironical and contemptuous in its treatment, heading its report "Mad Anthony's Raid." The Herald, under control of a young son of U. S. Senator Hitchcock, was vulgar and abusive, referring to the question as a "dead issue." The Republican, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Paris or New York. A ceaseless activity reigns along the thoroughfares, among the little steamboats upon the many water-ways, and on the myriads of passenger steamers which ply upon the lake. The Royal Opera House is a plain substantial structure, built by Gustavus III. in 1775. The late Jenny Lind made her first appearance in public in this house, and so did Christine Nilsson, both of these renowned vocalists being Scandinavians. It was in this theatre, at a gay masquerade ball, on the morning of March ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... her voice, and it unmanned him; he stalked off, raging. He remembered how the fiend, in Gounod's incomparable opera, whispered in the lover's ear: "Thou fool, wait for night and the moon!" and he was wroth with himself for the memory. While off duty he kept strict watch and ward over the gangway in which Iris's cabin was situated. It was useless; she ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Prince of Wales and Duke of Cumberland, after taking leave of their Majesties, set off for town, and honoured the Opera House with ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... from a chap-book called The Whistling Ploughman, published at the commencement of the present century, is written in imitation of Ariel's song, in the Tempest. It is probably taken from some defunct ballad-opera.] ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... moderate kind, but are always presupposed, no subjects being eligible but such as can be touched with a light and graceful irony. But then good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner-engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faery ball-rooms; rides off its ennui on thoroughbred horses; lounges at the club; has to keep clear of crinoline vortices; gets its science done by Faraday, and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... things more conclusive as to the sincerity of Swift's religion than his advice to poor John Gay to turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench. Gay, the author of the "Beggar's Opera"—Gay, the wildest of the wits about town—it was this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders—to invest in a cassock and bands—just as he advised him to husband his shillings and put his thousand pounds out at interest. The Queen, and the bishops, and the world, were right in mistrusting ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... with Sir Wm. Pen to meet him at the Opera, and finding by my walking in the streets, which were every where full of brick-bates and tyles flung down by the extraordinary winde the last night (such as hath not been in memory before, unless at the death of the late Protector,) that it was dangerous ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... their education. It is healthy, it is quiet, and—well, there are no young gentlemen. They go to bed early; they are up at daylight; they have the horse; they have boats; they amuse themselves ver' much. But they are impatient; they long for Paris—the salon, the theatre, the opera. They are like prisoners: they cannot make themselves to be contented. The baroness she has her villa on a lake back in the woods, and, mon ame! it is beautiful there—so still, so cool, so delightful! At present they have a great fear of the British. They lie awake; they listen; they expect to be ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... cheerfully. "Ages since I saw you. Will you come and dine to-night? I have a box for this winter opera that is on, and I am trying to persuade Miss Travers to come. She says Lady Verningham is not engaged to-night, she knows, and we might dine quietly and all go; don't ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... What is said of the laws of the drama? Name the two chief divisions. Define tragedy; comedy. What is tragi-comedy? farce? melodrama? opera? What is the difference between grand opera and opera bouffe? What is meant by unity of action? What other two unities are there? What is meant by unity of time? What is meant by unity of place? Where are the three unities strictly observed? ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... leader had gone Shelby gave a diligent quarter-hour to his bankbook. By and by he took an opera glass from a drawer and focussed it on the pair below. So his clerk came upon him, compelling a ruse of adjusting ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... shows us how rare was the exception. A century later, however, homosexuality among English women seems to have been regarded by the French as common, and Bacchaumont, on January 1, 1773, when recording that Mlle. Heinel of the Opera was settling in England, added: "Her taste for women will there find attractive satisfaction, for though Paris furnishes many tribades it is said ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... flower-bed. This summer, by the way, a pair of these winged emeralds fastened their mossy acorn-cup upon a bough of the same elm which the orioles had enlivened the year before. We watched all their proceedings from the window through an opera-glass, and saw their two nestlings grow from black needles with a tuft of down at the lower end, till they whirled away on their first short experimental flights. They became strong of wing in a surprisingly short time, and I never saw them or the male bird after, though the ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... "but I 'ave something 'ere which was found on the top of his portmanteau. I wot ye know not the use of this." To the Barbarian's intense indignation, the Cicerone produced, from under his, his (the Barbarian's) own opera hat. "Marry, what should be this? Read me this riddle! ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... simply looks, acts, and sings as a genuine Carmen, I can only suppose that her voice is not strong enough for the real Opera; otherwise I doubt whether any better operatic impersonator of the real character could be found. She is not the least bit burlesque, and though the songs she has to sing are nothing like so telling as those she has had given her in former pieces, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... was at that university, he wrote a beautiful copy of verses addressed to Mr. Addison, on his Opera of Rosamond. These verses contained many elegant compliments to the author, in which he compares his softness to Corelli, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... size and bark-like colour of its nest, the latter is very difficult to find. On the 8th April I fired at a specimen and missed it; it then flew off and settled in a fork of another tree about 30 feet from the ground. On looking carefully with an opera-glass, I found that it was sitting on its nest. I drove it off and shot it. The nest was very small and shallow, cup-shaped, and wedged in between two small boughs at their junction, and not appearing either above or below. ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... another a goblin dance, to which everybody carried jack-o'- lanterns, and the rest celebrated the holiday in other characteristic and amusing ways. The campus resembled a cross between the midway at a World's Fair and the grand finale of a comic opera; for ghosts consorted there with ballet dancers and Egyptian princesses, spooks and goblins linked arms with pirates in top-boots and rosy farmers' daughters in calico, and nuns and Puritan maidens ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... periods of intermission between their love scenes, spites, hatreds, murders, and general cremations. From such material and such opportunities it was comparatively easy for Wagner to construct the thrilling and interesting incidents that compose his opera on the legend of ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... headache and all, in an attitude as large and inspired as the boldest gesture antiquity has committed to marble—he had even the advantage in stature over most of the sculptured forms of Greece. But a double opera-glass at his eye "spoiled the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... to do it, but that night after dinner, Amanda King, who has charge of the news stand, told me the sheriff had closed the opera-house and that the leading woman was sick ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... three to take her to Madame Savelli, the great singing mistress, and at four her fate would be decided. She would then learn beyond cavil or doubt if she had, or was likely to acquire, sufficient voice for grand opera. So much Madame Savelli would know for certain, though she could not predict success. So many things were required, and to fail in one was to fail.... Owen expected Isolde and Brunnhilde, and she was to achieve in these parts something which had not been achieved. She ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... saw Kate Gilbert again, at a table not very far away from his. She was dressed in an evening gown, as if she had just come from the theater or opera. She was in the company of the elderly man who had met her at the wharf, and a young man and an older woman ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... for his. They had played cards with him, stolen his spurs, and now they were making him dance. It was an ancient pastime; yet two or three were glad to stand round and watch it, because it was some time since they had been to the opera. Now the tenderfoot had misunderstood these friends at the beginning, supposing himself to be among good fellows, and they therefore naturally set him down as a fool. But even while dancing you may learn much, and suddenly. The boy, besides being limber, had good tough ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... it's true. I want to write a serio-comic opera, a new sort of thing, and it struck me you were just cut out for that kind of singing. You have the face and the—you know—the refinement; sort of thing not easy to find. It's a poor chance, I'm afraid, coming ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... grunt and bluster in imitation of "Ned"—meaning Forrest—or quack and stutter a la "Bill"—that is, Macready—as the wind of popular favor veers and changes. It is curious, at a representation of the "Gladiator," to winnow these young gentlemen from the mass by the lens of an opera glass. There you may see the knit brows, the high shirt collars, the folded arms, the pursed-up lips, the hats drawn down over the eyes, that are the certain indications ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... see her a great deal, in Dresden," said Godmother when they had gone on their way, "and she's a dear. We must go and see her as she asked us to, and have her down to see us." Godmother spoke as if a very celebrated prima donna at the Metropolitan Opera were no different from any one else one might happen to know. Mary Alice couldn't ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... Victoris Antiocheni in Marcum, et Titi Bostrorum Episcopi in Evangelium Lucae commentarii; ante hac quidem nunquam in lucem editi, nunc vero studio et opera Theodori Peltani luce simul et Latinitate donati. Ingolstadt. ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... of the Concordat,[5197] Mademoiselle Chameron, an opera-dancer, dies, and her friends bear her remains to the church of Saint-Roch for internment. They are refused admittance, and the cure, very rigid, "in a fit of ill-humor," orders the doors of the church to be shut; a crowd gathers around, shouts and launches threats at the cure; an ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Sicilies; loyal wishes for the prosperity of their sovereigns, and the royal family, as well as for those of their worthy allies; and particular acknowledgments to the British hero. The music was most excellent; and all the opera band, with Senesino at their head, sung—"Rule Britannia!" and "God save the King!" in which they were joined by the whole assembly, who had been previously drilled ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... entire want of sympathy manifested by the king shocked her. He thought of nothing but his own personal pleasure. Regardless of the grief of Olympia, he exhibited himself, evening after evening, in court theatricals, emulating the agility of an opera-dancer, and ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Buren? Let me look at them. A spray of lilies of the valley; how touching! He expects you to wear them at the opera. I think it's such a mistake to wear real flowers on an evening dress. They have a damp, chilly look, like fresh vegetables, at first, and when they begin to fade they make you look faded, too. Never mind, Daphne; I think perhaps you'd better wear them ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... here that the various chapters composing this book—like those of "Astronomy with an Opera-glass"—were, in their original form, with the single exception of Chapter IX, published in Appletons' Popular Science Monthly. The author, it is needless to say, was much gratified by the expressed wish of many readers that these ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... running down the outer seam of each leg, and funny little round caps like the lid of a big baking-powder can set on one side of their heads, held there by a narrow strap that ran around the chin. But for all their comic-opera get-up, there was many a man that snickered at them that day in Benton who learned later to dread the flash of a scarlet jacket ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 1834 Adam suddenly bought a house in the rue de la Pepiniere. Six months later his style of living was second to none in Paris. About the time when he thus began to take himself seriously he had seen Clementine du Rouvre at the Opera and had fallen in love with her. A year later the marriage took place. The salon of Madame d'Espard was the first to sound his praises. Mothers of daughters then learned too late that as far back as the year 900 the family of the Laginski was among ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... Lubin, emerging from among the rhododendrons, "if I'd known you was a-listening I'd 'a faked up something from a French opera for you. Why, that's an old song as I've known ever since I was that high—'Tom of Exeter' they calls it. It's a rare favourite wi' the maids down in ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... about to thrust into the pocket of the carriage, asked, 'What was that?' [How touchingly simple!] I said it was 'one of many volumes of odds and ends de omnibus rebus;' and I read him the last entry I had made the night before, on my return from the opera. [How very obliging, considering that the horses were literally put to!] 'This is the very thing!' said the 'European publisher;' [how charming! and yet how droll!] and if the public is of the same opinion, I shall have nothing to regret in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... and let my whiskers grow; to dress in spick and span black, and a clean shut per day; muffings every night in the housekeeper's room; the pick of the gals in the servants' hall; a chap to clean my boots for me, and my master's opera bone reglar once a week. I knew what a vallit was as well as any genlmn in service; and this I can tell you, he's genrally a hapier, idler, handsomer, mor genlmnly man than his master. He has more money to spend, for genlmn WILL leave their silver in their waistcoat pockets; more suxess among the ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a laugh. "I was at Mrs. Robbie Walling's last night," she said. "She was talking about the crowds at the opera, and she said she was going to withdraw to some place where she wouldn't have to see such mobs of ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... reproachfully. "I know what you mean, and perhaps you are right, for that was what Toinette insinuated," she said. "She actually told me that I should be thankful I had a brain since I had no heart. Still, at first I let myself go, and it was delightful—the opera, the dances, and the covered skating-rink with the music and the black ice flashing beneath the lights. The whir of the toboggans down the great slide was finer still, and the torchlight meets of the snowshoe clubs on the mountain. Yes, I think I was really young ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... deeper than its doubt. The influence of his early education at Geneva is apparent here. An intellect so acute as his, trained in the school of Calvin in a republic where theological discussion was as much the amusement of the people as the opera was at Paris, could not fail to be a good logician. He had the fortitude to follow his logic wherever it led him. If the very impressibility of character which quickened his perception of the beauties of nature, and made him alive to the charm of music and musical ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Mr. Gay's opera has been acted near forty days running, and will certainly continue the whole season. So he has more than a fence about his thousand pounds; he will soon be thinking of a fence about his two thousand. Shall no one of us live as we would wish each other ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Society feel The Proletariat's heavy heel Its kibe approaching, Some luxuries yet are left to sing, The Opera-Box, the Row, the Ring, And Golf, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery which were introduced with loud laudation a few ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sank to the lower walks of dramatic art, singing in choruses at the opera, playing minor parts in show-pieces, and all the while feeling the sting of disappointed ambition and ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the miseries of war; and to open some sort of conversation, which (after our public overtures had glutted their pride), at a cautious and jealous distance, might lead to something like an accommodation. What was the event? A strange uncouth thing, a theatrical figure of the opera, his head shaded with three-coloured plumes, his body fantastically habited, strutted from the back scenes, and, after a short speech, in the mock heroic falsetto of stupid tragedy, delivered the gentleman who came to make the representation into the custody ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Continent could hardly he imagined.' The next morning he was in raptures over the coach that took him to London, with its light harness, four beautiful bays, and dashing coachman, who discussed the Opera, and hummed airs from the Puritani. He saw a hundred charming spots on the road that he coveted with quite a heartache, and even the little houses and gardens in the suburbs pleased his taste—there was such an affectionateness in the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... aggressive foreign policy on which they had so successfully appealed to the country, an unexpected event occurred during the recess of 1857 which led to their downfall. On the night of January 14th some Italian patriots threw three bombs under Napoleon's carriage as he was driving to the Opera. The Emperor and Empress had a narrow escape, and many spectators were killed or wounded. The outrage was prompted by a frantic notion that the death of Napoleon III was an indispensable step towards the freedom of Italy. Orsini, the leader of the conspirators, was not himself of ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... NETTED OPERA CAP.—Work with one mesh, half an inch wide; and another, smaller, of steel; and begin on a foundation of seventy-four stitches. You must procure in double German wool, two colors that contrast well: commence with the darkest shade, and net with the wide mesh ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... evenings my mother—this will surprise many in the case of so sensible a woman—took us to the theatre. Two of our relatives, Frau Amalie Beer and our beloved Moritz von Oppenfeld, subscribed for boxes in the opera-house, and when they did not use them, which often happened, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a young choir soprano leaves the little village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Judo's to train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she works, how she studies, how she suffers, ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... than this, I cordially embraced my friends, while they wept for joy in my arms. Their happiness was now complete, and the multitude returned with us, shouting for joy, to Rarik's dwelling, where an Eb, or artless opera, was represented; the subject,—my crew of the Rurik and myself: each song celebrated one of us individually, and the praises of the whole were chanted in the concluding chorus. I regretted much that I could not understand them better. The words, moll (iron), ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Eastern pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are absorbed. The unity of Asia and the detail of Europe, the infinitude of the Asiatic soul and the defining, result-loving, machine-making, surface-seeking, opera-going Europe Plato came to join, and by contact to enhance the energy of each. The excellence of Europe and Asia is in his brain. Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of Europe; he substricts the religion of Asia ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Garrick, who appears to have done for the play everything that ability and zeal could do, and who, from selfish motives, would, of course, have been well pleased if Virginia had been as successful as the Beggar's Opera. Nay, Crisp complained of the languor of the friends whose partiality had given him three benefit nights to which he had no claim. He complained of the injustice of the spectators, when, in truth, he ought to have been grateful ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at a concert presided over by the Duke of Montebello, and this led to other profitable engagements. But the great opportunity of his life came to him in Bologna. The people had thronged to the opera house to hear Malibran. She had disappointed them, and they were in no mood to be lenient to the unknown violinist who had the temerity to try to ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... experiences abroad. She had not liked Europe—being quite frankly a provincial person. To Castleman County a foreigner was a strange, dark person who mixed up his consonants, and was under suspicion of being a fiddler or an opera-singer. The people she had met under her husband's charge had been socially indubitable, but still, they were foreigners, and Sylvia could never really be sure what ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... and of the invisible "C," Miss Kling descended upon Mrs. Simonson, with the object of dragging from that lady all possible information she might be possessed of, regarding her latest lodger. As a result, Miss Kling learned that Miss Archer was studying to become an opera singer, that she occasionally now sang at concerts, meeting with encouraging success, and further, that she possessed the best of references. But Miss Kling gave a ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... formerly, of old. Olympus, -i, m., Olympus. omitto, -mittere, -misi, -missus [ob mitto], let go, neglect, disregard, throw away, lose. omnino [omnis], adv., altogether, wholly, entirely. omnis, -e, all, every. onero, -are, -avi, -atus [onus, load], load, burden. opera, -ae [opus], f., effort, work, labor. opinio, -onis [opinor, think], f., opinion, expectation; reputation. oppidum, -i, n., town. opportunus, -a, -um, suitable, seasonable, convenient, opportune. opprimo, -primere, -pressi, -pressus [ob premo], press against, overpower, ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... there are the Madre and Isolda out on the gallery, waving to us! I'll bet that they have been watching the bend of the road through their opera-glasses for ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... of the telegram Colonel Deitsch detailed Detectives Witte, Bulmer and Jackson to look after Jackson. It was learned that he roomed at the house of Mrs. McNevin, at 222 West Ninth, next door to Robinson's Opera House. Detective Jackson was stationed in the house and Witte and Bulmer in ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... Governor or for Senator, or for whatever Isabel Markley happened to think of; and papers containing these interviews, marked in green ink, came addressed to the office in her stylish, angular hand. During grand opera season one might see the Markleys hanging about the great hotels of Chicago or Kansas City, he a tired, sleepy-faced, prematurely old man, who seemed to be counting the hours till bed-time, and she a tailored, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... having practiced the virtues taught in the sermon. Churches are generally accepted as evidences of civilization. A man who is exploiting the interests of a new Western town will invariably tell you that it has so many churches. Also, an opera-house. The English world above all other worlds loves to hear good advice. England is the natural home of the sermon. Jusserand notes, almost with wonder, that in the annual statistics of the London ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Rome; but to all appearance for the Roman public the main matter in these Greek games was the music and dancing, and the text probably had little more significance for them than the texts of the Italian opera for the Londoners and Parisians of the present day. Those composite entertainments with their confused medley were far better suited for the Ionian public, and especially for exhibitions in private houses, than proper scenic performances in the Greek language; the view that the latter ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... assuredly not the place. One wonders whether Zululand would not be more favourable for such a man than England. Germany, France, and Italy have many positions in universities, picture-galleries, museums, opera houses for lovers of the beautiful, and above all an educated respect for artists and writers just as they have places too for servants of Truth in chemical laboratories and polytechnics endowed by the State with excellent results even from the utilitarian point of view. But rich England ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the chamber in question, in yellow slippers, red silk cloak trimmed with gold, fez cap, and white muslin turban, and, with folded arms, began pacing up and down under the casement of Miriam Haven, after the manner of singers at the opera, preparatory to beginning, was the same Tiffany? And yet, when he returned again, and holding his face up to the moon, which was shining at a convenient angle over the edge of the house, the tawny tuft clearly identified it as Tiffany and no one else. And yet, as ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... then made them, it is kindly that viscera misericordiae should be over those opera that came de ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... passed up the street, the droning, vibrating voice of the bear-leader came floating along the air and through the voices of the crowd like the thread of motive in the movement of an opera. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be observed, that conducting a symphony, an overture, or any other composition whose movements remain continual, vary little, and contain few nice gradations, is child's play in comparison with conducting an opera, or like work, where there are recitatives, airs, and numerous orchestral designs preceded by pauses ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... "Mr Slingo, you have immortalized yourself, by evoking the soul of Handel from so common an instrument as an ox's horn. I have studied music as a science—I have reviewed an opera—and once met Sir Henry Bishop at the Chinese exhibition; and I will make bold to say, that more genius was never shown by Rossini or Cherubini, than you have displayed on this stupendous and interesting occasion. Allow me, Mr Slingo, to shake ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... which he entertained his visitors, Dr Solander and Mr Monkhouse found that their pockets had been picked, the one of an opera-glass, the other of his snuffbox. The chief showed his concern, and offered several pieces of native cloth as a compensation. This, however, was refused. The chief going out, by the aid of a sage woman, recovered the articles, and restored them to ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... shops, factories, and cafes of German ownership which had thus been raided. The crowds did not always take time to make careful investigation before breaking up an establishment. I shall never forget the plight of the French proprietor of a cafe on the Place de l'Opera who was standing in front of his completely wrecked shop using all the most eloquent French gestures, as he repeated over and over in helpless rage: "Sacre nom d'un nom, je suis caporal du cent-dixieme de ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... avoid the danger of another autumn and winter in the damp. Do you write still for Mr. Chorley's periodical, and how does it go on? Here in Italy the fame of it does not penetrate. As for Venice, you can't get even a 'Times,' much less an 'Athenaeum.' We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the opera (the whole box on the ground tier, mind) for two shillings and eightpence English. Also, every evening at half-past eight, Robert and I are sitting under the moon in the great piazza of St. Mark, taking excellent coffee and reading the French ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... interrupted the Baron; "as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill. Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose representation the great pun was made;—I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing the line, 'L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt culottes,) a voice from ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... all his might; and he would sit for hours perched upon the topmost bar of Doctor Portman's library steps with a folio on his knees, whether it were Hakluyt's Travels, Hobbes's Leviathan, Augustini Opera, or Chaucer's Poems. He and the Vicar were very good friends, and from his Reverence, Pen learned that honest taste for port wine which distinguished him through life. And as for that dear good woman, Mrs. Portman, who was not in the least jealous, though her Doctor avowed himself ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shawls I suppose you include the cloaks which are made?-Yes; opera-[Page 42] cloaks, mantles, and squares. There is a great variety of them made, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... take a colored concert troupe, and though they may have splendid voices, they do not know enough to take advantage of their opportunities. People go to hear them because they are colored people, and they want to hear old-fashioned negro melodies, and yet these mokes will tackle Italian opera and high toned music that they don't know how ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... of music turned a new and surprising page. "It is necessary," declared an acute French critic, M. Jean Marnold, writing shortly after the event, "to go back perhaps to Tristan to find in the opera house an event so important in certain respects for the evolution of musical art." The assertion strikes one to-day, five years after, as, if anything, over-cautious. Pelleas et Melisande exhibited not simply a new manner of writing opera, but a new kind of music—a new way of evolving and ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... down in the lobby," she said when I had placed the opera-glasses and the programme on the edge of her box and ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... lived a King and Queen who loved each other so much that they were never happy unless they were together. Day after day they went out hunting or fishing; night after night they went to balls or to the opera; they sang, and danced, and ate sugar-plums, and were the gayest of the gay, and all their subjects followed their example so that the kingdom was called the Joyous Land. Now in the next kingdom everything was as ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... she had the same desire to please, and that she wore her mourning garb in so charming a manner, that "the order of nature seemed changed, since age and beauty could be found united." Ten years before, in 1647, at the age of thirty-five, when Mazarin gave a comedy in the Italian style, that is, an opera, there was in the evening a grand ball, and the Duchess de Montbazon was present, adorned with pearls, with a red feather on her head, and so dazzling in her appearance that the whole company was completely charmed. We can ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... a fascination for young men of that class of character. In saying the stage, I mean the people on it of the female sex. Therefore, when I heard that my son was supposed to be fascinated by a dancer, I knew what that usually meant in Society, and confided in her being a dancer at the Opera, where young men moving in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... his warehouse of information. Then you'd run across the fact that he had once finished a course in a middle-western university—and forgotten it. The schools had left little of their blighting mark upon him, yet "pump" "Mac" on any subject from rapid-fire guns to grand opera and you'd get at least a reasonable answer. Though you wouldn't guess the knowledge was there unless you did pump for it, for "Mac" was not of the type of those who overwork the first person pronoun, not because ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... clothes for me. Now and then I went with my parents to the theatre, where the first representations which I saw were in German. "Das Donauweibchen" was the favorite piece of the whole city; there, however, I saw, for the first time, Holberg's Village Politicians treated as an opera. ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... damage except to houses in this filled-in territory, and to houses built along the line of some of the many streams which ran from the hills down to the bay, and which were filled in as the town grew—for instance, the Grand Opera House was built over the bed of St. Anne's Creek. A bog, slough and marsh, known as the Pipeville Slough, was the ground on which the City Hall was built, and which was originally a burying ground. Sand from the western ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... glimmerings of sense, and the excessive stupidity that can neither take in nor give out any idea. He was thoroughly impressed with the idea of doing his duty in society; and, doing his utmost to be agreeable, had adopted the smile of an opera dancer as his sole method of expression. Satisfied, he smiled; dissatisfied, he smiled again. He smiled at good news and evil tidings; with slight modifications the smile did duty on all occasions. If he was positively obliged to express his ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... In this opera the composer far surpasses all his other compositions. It is his swan's song, for he composed it in the summer of 1880 and he died in October of the same year after having given his best to the world, a true work of genius, so full of grace, of delicate feeling and ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Octavius one evening in early February, "as if the Grits were getting a little anxious about South Fox—high time, too. I see Cruickshank is down to speak at Clayfield on the seventh, and Tellier is to be here for the big meeting at the opera ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan |
