"Operatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lived a curious old lady who wore a bonnet of Sweet Sixteen of the time of the Crimea, and with a sense of colour which would wreck the reputation of a kaleidoscope. She it was who had taught her son Orlando the tunefulness of Meyerbeer and Balfe and Offenbach, and the operatic jingles of that type of composer. Orlando Guise had come by his outward showiness naturally. Yet he was not like his mother, save in this particular. His mother was flighty and had no sense, while he, behind the gaiety of his wardrobe and his giggles, had very much sense of a quite ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of San Marco the scene was like a water-carnival. Hundreds of gondolas, with bobbing lights, swam slowly round the barges of the serenaders, who, for the most part, were fallen operatic stars or those who had failed to attain those dizzy heights. Many of them had good voices, but few of them last long in the damp Venetian night air. To-night there were three of these belanterned barges, taking their stands about three hundred ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... includes the whole general character or distinctive impression of any given workmanship in Art, and so is applicable to the Drama; as when we speak of a writer's tragic or comic style, or of such and such dramas as being in too operatic a style. The peculiarities of Shakespeare's style in this sense have been involved in the foregoing sections; so that I shall have no occasion to speak further of them in this general survey of the Poet's Art. The more restrained and ordinary meaning of the word looks merely to an author's ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... into the past, and he recalled the evenings when he as a little child was enraptured listening to some operatic selection brilliantly played, while his mother sat accompanying upon the piano. Then he recollected the first lessons given him by his father upon that very flute, and years after the plaudits he listened to with burning cheeks after ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... be put in the music wherever possible. Punch is sometimes secured by the trick of repetition in the chorus, as well as at the beginning and end. The theme may be and usually is the punch, but in the variations there may be punches not suggested by the theme. Themes, semi-classical, or even operatic, or punches of old favorites may be used—but not those of other popular songs—and then it is best to use ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... and looked spiteful enough; but he soon recovered his cynical egotism, and went off whistling an operatic passage. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... to write, and for that alone he would deserve praise, even if he had not beaten the English so gloriously. Mademoiselle Verrieres was an actress and Dupin de Francueil a dilettante. Aurore's grandmother, Marie-Aurore, was very musical, she sang operatic songs, and collected extracts from the philosophers. Maurice Dupin was devoted to music and to the theatre. Even Sophie-Victoire had an innate appreciation of beauty. She not only wept, like Margot, at melodrama, but she noticed the pink of a cloud, ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... under famous Continental teachers, and at eighteen she made her first appearance in public, exciting much attention by the powerful dramatic qualities of her voice. It was evident that her right course was to go in for operatic singing, and this she did. She continued on the most affectionate terms with her family, but naturally her pursuit took her into quite another path of life, and we saw less and less of her as time went on. This threw my brother and myself more together. There was only a year's difference ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... I've only known you two months, since the day we accidentally met, leaving Paris for Bayreuth. You have written your mother nothing of our engagement—well, provisional engagement, if you will—and you insist on sticking to the operatic stage. I loathe it, and I confess to you that I am sick with jealousy when I see you near that lanky, ill-favored German tenor Burgmann." "What, poor, big me!" she interjected, in teasing accents. "Yes, you, Fridolina. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... first recognize the operatic air, so admirably modified and retarded it was, and its former rapid words replaced by a sad and touching theme, which called for noble endurance in one borne down by suffering. The accompaniment consisted of simple chords and arpeggios, a very plain and sufficient background. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... is widely considered to be one of the pre-eminent classical music figures of the Western world. This German musical genius created numerous works that are firmly entrenched in the repertoire. Except for a weakness in composing vocal and operatic music (to which he himself admitted, notwithstanding a few vocal works like the opera "Fidelio" and the song "Adelaide,"), Beethoven had complete mastery of the artform. He left his stamp in 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 10 violin sonatas, 32 piano sonatas, numerous string quartets and dozens ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... Byron, who "had always an idea that it would be bungled," expressed his fear that the country would be thrown back for 500 years into barbarism, and the Countess Guiccioli confessed with tears that the Italians must return to composing and strumming operatic airs. Carbonarism having collapsed, it of course made way for a reaction; but the encouragement and countenance of the English poet and peer helped to keep alive the smouldering fire that Mazzini fanned into a flame, till Cavour turned it to a practical purpose, and the dreams of the idealists ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Matthew made its mark on Mendelssohn from the time when he discovered it at the age of twelve, and suggested to him many features in the general design of oratorios, by means of which he rescued that branch of art from the operatic influences that ruined Beethoven's Mount of Olives. Without the example of Bach, Wagner's schemes of Leitmotif would never in his lifetime have become woven into that close polyphonic texture ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... before Siegfried was born, and when he kisses her he seems to be quite a man! By the way, Brunhilde was put to sleep for interfering somehow or other in the love affairs of Siegfried's mother and father, who are really sister and brother. If you think of it, the story is extremely indecent, but operatic things never seem to be shocking; music, apparently, covers a multitude of naughtiness, like charity is reported to do. Very likely that's why Mrs. —— is always doing so much for institutions and what not—for her sins, I suppose. I always thought she was a naughty old hypocrite! ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... pieces d'occasion. Of most of these not even the names are on record. In 1792 Cimarosa left St Petersburg, and went to Vienna at the invitation of the emperor Leopold II. Here he produced his masterpiece, Il Matrimonio segreto, which ranks amongst the highest achievements of light operatic music. In 1793 Cimarosa returned to Naples, where Il Matrimonio segreto and other works were received with great applause. Amongst the works belonging to his last stay in Naples may be mentioned the charming opera Le Astuzie feminili. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... overhangs me is trembling. It is a foundered horse, whose great body is emptying itself, whose blood is flowing like poor touches of a tongue on to my hand. I shut my eyes, bemused, and think of a bygone merry-making; and I remember that I once saw, at the end of a hunt, against the operatic background of a forest, a child-animal whose life ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... things from this new departure. It is rare enough for an operatic performer to be capable of both singing and acting, or to be alike beautiful to look on and to listen to. Once we have accepted the convention by which an actor's lips are allowed to move in one part of the stage while the sound comes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... seem to be mentally summarising the exact cost of each other's toilettes. Their daughters, or somebody else's daughters, are desperately jerking out monosyllabic responses to feeble remarks concerning the weather, lawn tennis, operatic dbutantes, the gravel in the Row, the ill-health of the Princess, and kindred topics from a couple of F.O. men. Little Snapshot, the wit, on the other side of the Gorgon, has tried to lead up to a story, but has found himself, as it were, frozen in the bud. When lo! the butler ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... universal choice (The company's demand was an emphatic one, For the old Bishop had a glorious voice), In a quartet he joined—an operatic one. Harmless enough, though ne'er a word of grace in it, When, lo! that curate came and took the bass ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... nationality. There is no trustworthy evidence that he ever sought the flattery that was lavished on him; indeed, he seems to have been alternately in the mood for ignoring or making fun of it. On one occasion he writes to King Joseph, "I have never sought the applause of Parisians; I am not an operatic monarch."[15] ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... marched rapidly up and down his room, whistled a few bars of a popular melody, and in his exuberant gaiety attempted an operatic air in a voice deplorably ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... not. Mr. Kloot's orders. Can't have authors monkeying around here.' As he spoke Goldwater's voice rose from the neighbouring stage in an operatic melody, and reduced Pinchas's brain to chaos. A despairing sense of strange plots and treasons swept over him. He ran back to the lobby. The doors had been bolted. He beat against them with his cane and his fists and his toes till a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... congratulated us on the stirring events of that day in 1776. Of the Americans assembled, many contributed to the general entertainment. Grace Greenwood, Miss Rachel Foster, Miss Kate Hillard and Miss Mildred Conway gave recitations. Miss Lippincott, daughter of Grace Greenwood, sang some fine operatic music; Mrs. Carpenter of Chicago sang sweetly, playing her own accompaniment; Mr. Frank Lincoln gave some of his amusing impersonations; Miss Maud Powell of Chicago, only fourteen years of age, who had been taking lessons in France and Germany for some years, played ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... smoke: in this or any other kind, that poor torpid male soul: those Mailly Sisters, three in number (I am shocked to hear), successive, nay in part simultaneous! They are proud women, especially the two younger; with ambition in them, with a bravura magnanimity, of the theatrical or operatic kind; of whom Louis is very fond. "To raise France to its place, your Majesty; the top of the Universe, namely!" "Well; if it could be done,—and quite without trouble?" thinks Louis. Bravura magnanimity, blown upon by Belleisle, prevails among ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... more like Nature than the trio in "I Puritani" is like conversation. Turner never dreamed of painting like Nature, and no sane man ever saw or can see, in this world, Nature in the colors in which he has painted her, any more than he will find men conducting business in operatic notes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... in something like astonishment at him; but Zaidie was already in touch with them, and half by song and half by signs she very soon gave them an idea of what they were and where they had come from. Her husband afterwards told her that it was the best piece of operatic acting he had ever seen, and, considering all the circumstances, this ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... tall, very thin, with the intellectual look that black-rimmed glasses produce. His eyes harmonized in color with the black shock of tossing hair that set off a distinguished appearance. And, like a traditional votary of music, he wore a great black cloak swinging around him with an operatic air, giving the impression that he was just going to or coming from ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... was forgotten by the public, and he was happy in the seclusion of this forgetfulness. A new and strange career had opened up before him: he was the father of the most beautiful prima donna in the operatic world, and, difficult as the task was, he did his best to live up to it. It was hard not to offer to shake hands when he was presented to a princess or a duchess; it was hard to remember when to change the ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... resistance to the ill-repute with which I am credited as a conductor. Indeed I owe my friend Dingelstedt many thanks for having (without perhaps exactly desiring to do so) given me the chance of freeing myself from the operatic time- beating here, and I am firmly resolved not to wield the baton elsewhere except in the most unavoidable cases! Blow must now often mount the conductor's desk. He has the mind, liking, talent, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... and the hostess wondered why Honora did not study for the operatic stage. Then they all urged her to think of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Milton's thoughts are wonderfully just and natural, dwelt on the passage in which Adam tells his thoughts upon first falling asleep, soon after his creation. This passage he contrasts with the same apprehension of Annihilation ascribed to Eve in a much lower sense by Dryden in his operatic version of Paradise Lost. In Tatlers and Spectators Steele and Addison had been equal contributors to the diffusion of a sense of Milton's genius. In Addison it had been strong, even when, at Oxford, in April, 1694, a young man trained ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not equal in value Lortzing's "Czar and Zimmermann", it has nevertheless proved an admirable addition to the operatic repertory. It is attractive both on account of the freshness of its melodies and the popular character of ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... weary superiority, tilting his chair far back near an open window in the true Costaguana manner. The military band happened to be braying operatic selections on the plaza just then, and twice he raised his hand imperatively for silence in order to ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... home of the Welsh bards so called because the language in which they are written, which resembles a mixture of Chech, Chinese, Celtic and Chocktaw, is barred from the concert and operatic stage. ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... ordained it otherwise. I found myself surrounded by pressmen and picture people. Of course, he disclaimed responsibility as usual, but I could read his guilt in his eyes. He persists in 'booming' me as though I were an operatic nightingale with a poor voice or a variety comedian ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... shows a curious growth away from his early ideas. He was at first an artistic disciple of Meyerbeer, and not only drew operatic inspirations from him, but was saved from starving by Meyerbeer's money and by his letters of introduction; later he came to abhor Meyerbeer's operas, and to despise the man himself and his ways. Wagner earned himself numberless powerful enemies ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... of the fiftieth year of its establishment, the words being adapted to the music composed by Cherubini for Charles X.s coronation. This was also the last year in which the Festival performances took place in St. Philip's Church or (except several single nights of operatic selections) at the Theatre. Besides the "Jubilee Anthem," there were novelties in the shape of Zingarelli's "Cantata Sacra" (described in a musical publication as a "tame, insipid, heap of commonplace trash"), and the introduction of "operatic selections" at the evening ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... multitudes, until the sweet singing of Madame Ruhl, the chorister, swept into the moan of pipes, and rose to a grand peal, quivering and trilling, like a nightingale wounded, making more tears than the sublimest operatic effort and the house reeled and trembled, as if Miriam and her chanting virgins were lifting praises to God in the midst of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Gay is but little known to the present generation. Young people or old people do not read his fables any more—those fables which Rousseau thought worthy of special discussion in his great treatise on Education. The gallant Captain Macheath swaggers and sings across the operatic stage no more, nor are tears shed now for pretty Polly Peachum's troubles. Yet every day some one quotes from Gay, and does not know what he ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... he founded the musical conservatory in that city. The sudden death of his favorite sister, Fannie, gave him such a shock that he died within a few months after her. Mendelssohn exerted little influence as an operatic composer, but achieved the highest rank by such vocal compositions as the oratorios "St. Paul" and "Elijah," and some of his beautiful songs, which have become folksongs. Of his orchestral pieces, the most famous are his concert overtures, such as that of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... walk and converse, the military band continues to play operatic selections, zarzuela medleys, pots-pourris of favourite airs and Cuban dances. At ten o'clock precisely the music ceases, and the band removes to the governor's house which faces the square. At a given signal, a quick march is played, and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Giovanni; that Miss ARNOLDSON shows great promise; that ALBANY is unrivalled; that MARIE ROZE is difficult to beat as Carmen; and that it is a pity that PATTI'S demands are so exorbitant; and having exhausted the list of operatic artists,—Madame and her daughters holding that certain Germans, with whose names we, unfortunately for us, are not even acquainted, are far superior to any French or Italian singers that can be named—there ensues a pause in the conversation, of which the Countess CASANOVA takes advantage, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... way in which the crows' love of variety is manifest, though in a much more dignified way. Occasionally a flock may be surprised sitting about in the trees, deeply absorbed in watching a performance—generally operatic—by one of their number. The crow's chief note is the hoarse haw, haw with which everybody is familiar, and which seems capable of expressing everything, from the soft chatter of going to bed in the pine tops to the loud derision with which he detects all ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... that Roger and I should not discuss the opera business, but we didn't. That it hurt him I knew, for I knew Roger. Anglo-Saxon to the backbone, the position which his wife as a successful operatic star must put him in could be nothing but highly distasteful to him. It is one thing to snatch your wife from the stage, as Margarita's noble grandfather had done, and enjoy her in your home; it is quite another to see her snatched from your ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... come in to reap an annual harvest here too, and have and long will have their zealous party of admirers. Were Opera an organized home industry among us, as much as other forms of music,—were there some meaning in the name "Academy of Music" worn by operatic theatres, it would be more useful to our artistic progress. But Italian Opera, as managed, and "star" concerts generally, are no part of the healthy, permanent development of our own musical resources. They are speculations; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the gipsies, in common with waterfalls and ruined castles, belong to the ready-made operatic poetry of the world, from which the last thrill has long since departed. They are, so to say, public poetry, the public property of the emotions, and no longer touch the private heart or stir the private imagination. Our fathers ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... rye-fields, where, crossing and recrossing the swift St. Charles, it finally rises at Lorette above the level of the citadel. It is a lonelier road than that to Montmorenci, and the scattering cottages upon it have not the well-to-do prettiness, the operatic repair, of stone-built Beauport. But they are charming, nevertheless, and the people seem to be remoter from modern influences. Peasant-girls, in purple gowns and broad straw hats, and not the fashions of the year before last, now and then appeared to our ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... taken as a sign that Atlanta is peculiarly a music-loving community. Indeed, I was told by one Atlanta lady, herself a musician, that the city did not contain more than a thousand persons of real musical appreciation, that a number of these could not afford to attend the operatic performances, and that opera week was, consequently, in reality more an occasion of great social festivity than of devout ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... hour, engaged in at any rate the pretence of earning his living; and, second, why he did not take his gloves off. No notion of work seemed to exist in the minds of the three. They chattered of tennis, novels, music, and particularly of amateur operatic societies. James acquired the information that Emanuel was famous as a singer of songs. The topic led then naturally to James's concertina; the talk lightly caressed James's concertina, and then Emanuel swept it off to the afternoon tea-room of the new Midland Grand ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... headed the revolt against the management of the other house. At that time the tide of popular success at Drury Lane had reached a rather low ebb, a painful circumstance due, no doubt, to the fickleness of a public that was beginning to tire of the favourite players and to betray a fondness for operatic and spectacular productions rather than the "legitimate." Christopher Rich, the manager of the theatre, was, like many of his kind, more given to considering the weight of his purse than the scant supply of sentiment with which nature might originally have endowed ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... immovable way Mills began charging his pipe. I felt extremely embarrassed all at once, but became positively annoyed when I saw our Prax enter the cafe in a sort of mediaeval costume very much like what Faust wears in the third act. I have no doubt it was meant for a purely operatic Faust. A light mantle floated from his shoulders. He strode theatrically up to our table and addressing me as "Young Ulysses" proposed I should go outside on the fields of asphalt and help him gather a few marguerites ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... ambition to rise above their proper rank, is wholly original; it mounts in the close from comedy to the extravagance of farce, and perhaps in the uproarious laughter of the play we may discover a touch of effort or even of spasm. The operatic Psyche (1671) is memorable as having combined the talents of Moliere, Corneille, and Quinault, with the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... him, she had in fact sought for such an encounter. It was in the great armoury. Leonard, as soon as he perceived his wife, began humming some mad operatic tune, an opera bouffe air and bawled through the door to the dog-keeper to ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... there is lurking always this queer anomaly of the chorus. We have in our modern theatre no chorus, and when, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the ballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the intervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and pottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble to join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the choral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them alone commands a traditional ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... the many-statued sculpture of its facade. Strangers go there to see the splendor of its high altar (where the melodramatic Madonna, as the centre of a marble group, responds to the prayer of the operatic Venezia, and drives away the haggard, theatrical Pest), and the excellent Titians and the grand ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... "I never play operatic transcriptions and never will. The music of the opera, no matter how fine, appears to me to have its proper place on the stage—it seems out of place on the violin recital program. The artist cannot be too careful in the choice of his shorter program pieces. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... direful institution; that there must be somewhere in the house a place of torment, the angels who abide therein, giving us our daily bread and doughnuts, being of a totally different type from the glorious creatures singing songs of praise and operatic melodies in the upper stories. That the genius of the kitchen and the parlor can be one and the same is a conception too stupendous for ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... man, the good husband, the tender father; he slips into the conjugal bed, his imagination still afire with the illusive forms of the operatic nymphs, and so turns to the profit of conjugal love the world's depravities, the voluptuous curves of Taglioni's leg. And finally, if he sleeps, he sleeps apace, and hurries through his slumber as ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... as a moral monster, in which form she still treads the operatic stage, and this is the conception which mankind in general have of her. The lover of real poetry regards this romanticist's terrible drama of Lucretia Borgia as a grotesque manifestation of the art, while the historian laughs at it; the poet, however, may excuse himself on the ground ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... commerce of the more sight-seen parts of the Thames is concerned, it is as unimpressive as may be. It has nothing of the dramatic presence of the shipping in the Hudson or the East River, with its light operatic touches in the gayly painted Sound and North River steamboats. You must go as far at least as Stepney on the Thames before you begin to realize that London is the largest port, as well as the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... gong pounding and the shrill, high sound of discordant reed instruments. When one or more of the characters commits suicide (which as we know is an honoured custom in China) he sings—or rather whines—a long chant before he dies, just as his western operatic colleagues do, as, for instance, Edgar in "Lucia di Lammermoor" and even, to come nearer ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... come to the footbridge and were in the act of crossing it, when they became aware that the stream beneath them differed from all streams in their experience. It was not rippling like other streams; it was not murmuring; it was tinkling out a gay little operatic tune! ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... this trying hour at Strides Cottage, this moment would outstep its importance by reminding her how, in spite of the pressure and complexity of her embarrassment, an absurd memory would intrude itself of an operatic tenor singing to the soprano the story of how she was changed at birth, and so forth, the diva listening operatically the while. It went so far with her now, for all this tension, as to make a comment ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... rail, to dine al fresco in the garden of some semi-foreign hotel, to taste the unconventional pleasures of the town, as if one were in some foreign city. She used to say that New York in matting and hollands was almost as nice as Buda-Pesth. These were really summer nights, operatic sorts of nights, with music floating in the air, gay groups in the streets, a stage imitation of nature in the squares with the thick foliage and the heavy shadows cast on the asphalt by the electric lights, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... now commands thousands of dollars on the operatic stage, was placed under training at the joint expense of her benefactress and ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... knee-breeches and a cocked hat watched the proceedings cynically in the right-hand corner, whilst on the left a big fat man frantically endeavoured to recover his wig, that had been lost in the melee. The advertisement was headed, 'Morton and Cox's Operatic Company,' and concluded with the announcement that Madame Angot would be played at the Queen's Theatre. After a few moments spent in examining the picture Kate said it must have something to do ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... on one side," he said, "I cannot read it; the notes of the Miserere are still sounding in my heart, and this operatic air would but create a discord. We will proceed to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... bursting with pride of place and achievement, and offering energy and brains to help Britishers along, I just feel as if you'd got to be told a few home-truths for your good. Now I'm going to liven the meeting with a little operatic music," and she tripped indoors to the piano. Van Hert shrugged his shoulders expressively, and then stood silently beside Meryl for some moments looking into the night. And as he stood he became conscious of ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... nothing corrupting to appear; and the effect of this administration and restraint is to be seen in Berlin even to this day. The public gardens are full of charming little resorts, where, every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one can have either a concert of good music, or a very fair dramatic or operatic performance. Here whole families may be seen enjoying together a wholesome and refreshing entertainment,—the mother and aunts with their knitting, the baby, the children of all ages, and the father,—their ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... person in Aureataland—best known, that is, by name and face and fame—for her antecedents and circumstances were wrapped in impenetrable mystery. When I arrived in the country the Signorina Christina Nugent had been settled there about a year. She had appeared originally as a member of an operatic company, which had paid a visit to our National Theater from the United States. The company passed on its not very brilliant way, but the signorina remained behind. It was said she had taken a fancy to Whittingham, and, being independent ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... incidents, and would furnish splendid material for the pen of a novelist. But such a journey from the Saxon capital to Warsaw, which took about eight days, and cost on an average from 3,000 to 3,500 thalers (450 to 525 pounds), was a mere nothing compared with the migration of a Parisian operatic company in May, 1700. The ninety-three members of which it was composed set out in carriages and drove by Strasburg to Ulm, there they embarked and sailed to Cracow, whence the journey was continued ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... would stick. He spoke French though with a Polish accent, and also German, but did not care much for German music except Bach and Mozart. Beethoven—save in the C sharp minor and several other sonatas—was not sympathetic. Schubert he found rough, Weber, in his piano music, too operatic and Schumann he dismissed without a word. He told Heller that the "Carneval" was really not music at all. This remark is one of the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... numerous, for at that time there was no soiree in Paris—homely or fashionable—without romances; the public taste was not so fastidious as it has since become, and did not expect from a school-girl the performance of an operatic prima donna. When out in the boat on a peaceful and serene night, my husband rowing us slowly on the glassy water, it seemed that the melodies which rose and spread in the hazy atmosphere were the natural complement to these enchanted hours. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... she occasionally contributed over the signature of "Sabaean." Gradually her thoughts wandered from the completed task to other themes of scarcely less interest. The week previous she had accompanied Hugh to an operatic concert given by the Parodi troupe, and had been astonished to find Russell seated on the bench in front of her. He so rarely showed himself on such occasions that his appearance elicited some comment. They had met ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... At first afraid lest crowded house had expended all its enthusiasm before quarter past ten, when the event of the evening was to come off. "Not a bit of it," says Sir DRURIOLANUS, who knows his operatic public; "they've just warmed up for LEONCAVALLO'S Pagliacci. LEONCAVALLO," he continues, "is the composer for my money; and my advice is, LAY-ON-CAVALLO'S Pagliacci." So saying, the Musical Manager lightly touches his nasal organ ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... Germany (1772), much impressed by JOHANN FRIEDRICH AGRICOLA (1720-1774), court composer and director of the royal chapel to Frederick the Great. This Agricola was a pupil of Bach, and a fine organist and clever writer on music, especially on operatic style, the problems of which were beginning to be raised by French writers-and composers in preparation for ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... blue men tumble about! Huzza! there's a fellow's head off,— How the dark red blood spouts out! And look, what a jolly bonfire!— Wants nothing but colored light! Oh, papa, burn a lot of cities, And burn the next one at night!' "'Yes, child, it is operatic; But don't forget, in your glee, That for your sake this play is playing, That you may be worthy of me. They baptized you in Jordan water,— Baptized as a Christian, I mean,— But you come of the race of Caesar, And thus have their baptisms been. Baptized in true Caesar ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... of the town, where antiquated "flies" won't take anybody anywhere under half-a-crown. It belongs, I suppose, to that strain of fidelity which runs through the British "soul"—a fidelity which finds expression in facing death sooner than forego roast beef on Sunday, and will applaud an old operatic favourite until her front teeth drop out. It is all very laudable, but it has its "trying" side. One becomes rather tired of the average seaside resort, which is built and designed rather as if the "authorities" believed that God made Blackpool on the Seventh Day, and it was their religious duty ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... again in the evening, and taken a short stroll along the quay where a noisy band was discoursing operatic airs. The performance elicited from Mr. Muhlen some caustic comments on Latin music as contrasted with that of Russia and other countries. He evidently knew the subject. Mr. Heard, to whom music was Greek, soon found himself out of his depths. Later on, in the smoking-room, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Besides the operatic music above mentioned, Burney's known compositions consist of:—(1) Six Sonatas for the harpsichord; (2) Two Sonatas for the harp or piano, with accompaniments for violin and violoncello; (3) Sonatas for two violins and a bass: two sets; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... enthusiasm, for she was the favourite of the public until her retirement; her beautiful voice and simplicity of manner charming everyone, from Royalty downwards. Unfortunately her debut was somewhat marred by a pecuniary squabble between her and Bunn, the operatic poet, a rival impresario, Lumley, having secured her services. Here is ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... rows, and girls in gospel bonnets, and little silver and crimson placards of Bible texts. They stopped on a corner to listen to a Pentecostal brother, to an I. W. W. speaker, to a magnificent negro who boomed in an operatic baritone that the Day of Judgment was coming on April 11, 1923, at three ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... understand," Dabnitz added. "There is an operatic tenor in the command—one Chautonville. We might have sent for him, but our thought was to reach the soldiers directly. It is ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... more or less under protest, because of its length, and because his mind was too practical for the indirect operatic form. He could not remain patient at a recital; the effort to listen to one performer for an hour and a half was too severe a tax upon his restless nature. The Philadelphia Orchestra gave a symphony concert each Saturday evening, and Bok dreaded the coming ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... of Boston, has recently delivered an admirable lecture before the Mercantile Library Association of this city, on "Operatic Music," illustrated by a critical examination of Rossini's Don Giovanni. Mr. Dwight's rare musical learning and accomplishments, his exquisite taste in art, and his remarkable felicity of expression, were displayed to singular advantage in this masterly ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... On the operatic stage Madame Sembrich was by all odds Field's favorite prima donna. He was one of the earliest writers on the press to recognize the wonderful beauty of the singer's voice and the perfection of her method. He easily distinguished between her trained faculty and the bird-like notes of Patti, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... realist if you forget his old-fashioned operatic scenery and costumes. It is to Jane Austen we must go for the realism admired of Mr. Howells, and justly. Her work is all of a piece. The Russians are realists, but with a difference; and that deviation ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... literature knows not where to give a place at the present day, so far are they from offering a single recommendable quality. The only style of composition in which the Abbe de Voisenon might have, perhaps, distinguished himself, had he been seconded by an intelligent musician, was the operatic. In this baladin talent of his there was something of the freedom and sparkle of the Italian abbes; and yet the Abbe de Voisenon enjoyed during his life-time a high degree of celebrity. Seeing the utter impossibility of justifying ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... how it turned out. The Lord Chamberlain finally refused his license for operatic performances, and Gallini had to be content with a license for "entertainments of music and dancing." He opened his house on the 20th of March, and continued during the season to give mixed entertainments twice a week. Various works of Haydn's were performed at these ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... pastel-like costume reflected in the golden wine, which loaned to it its sparkling warmth, recalled the former heroine of the dainty suppers after the play, the Crenmitz of the good old days, not an audacious hussy after the style of our modern operatic stars, but entirely unaffected and nestling contentedly in her splendor like a fine pearl in its mother-of-pearl shell. Felicia, who was certainly determined to be agreeable to everybody that evening, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... City financiers, celebrities of the drama and of the operatic stage, luminaries of the law, diplomats, and rich retired traders who had shed the "tradesman" and blossomed into "gentleman," jostled one another in the rooms and on the stairs. It is surprising how people will rush to the house of a wealthy man. At least one Duke was present, ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... these multiplied treasures played at any rate, through the years, the part of a friendly private-box at the constant operatic show, a box at the best point of the best tier, with the cushioned ledge of its front raking the whole scene and with its withdrawing rooms behind for more detached conversation; for easy—when not indeed slightly difficult— polyglot talk, artful bibite, artful cigarettes too, straight from ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the Kodak. But the cachape—here is something not to be lightly passed over. Lying idle it may not strike him at first sight as a cart, but rather as a remnant of some revolution, when, tired of waging light operatic war, the army disbanded, leaving their gun-carriages to serve more ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... schools. Haydn introduced the variety and melody of the opera into the oratorio, of which his "Creation" is a standing proof. In the latter half of the foregoing century, sacred music has gradually yielded to the opera. Mozart brought the operatic style to perfection in the wonderful compositions ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... They did not appear half so mysterious as when seen in the dark. The Tower of London had shrunk into quite a small buttressed building of brick and Nebuchadnezzar's Fiery Furnace dwindled considerably in size. The Medes and Persians, on the other hand, looked wilder and more "operatic" than at night. I think as a matter of fact ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... our most successful operatic managers—impressario, I believe, is the more correct appellation—was about to produce the opera of "Salome," which had been taken off the rival stage after its first performance, on the assumption that New York was shocked. The singer was not only to sing the part, if one can sing ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... Naples, Graham heard little of Selby except as a literary recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage. But he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil had shown to her, when left by Selby's death alone in the world; of the interest which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one so eminent as the great French ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accomplished organist and composer, as a violinist respectable, even in a corps which included Reicha, Romberg, Ries. He had been reared in the severe Saxon school of the Bachs, and before coming to Bonn had had much experience as music director of an operatic company. He knew the value of the maxim, Festina lente, and was wise enough to understand, that no lofty and enduring structure can be reared, unless the foundations are broad and deep,—that sound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... of temperament and originality may, and sometimes do, mask defects of emission, particularly in the case of artists following the operatic career. But the artistic life and success of such a singer is short. Violated Nature rebels, and avenges herself for all infractions of law. A voice that is badly produced or emitted speedily becomes ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... with a cultivated voice, I on deck and he on the quay sitting on the case of a piano (landed out of our hold that very afternoon), and smoking a cigar which smelt very good. We touched, in our discourse, upon science, politics, natural history, and operatic singers. Then, after remarking abruptly, "You seem to be rather intelligent, my man," he informed me pointedly that his name was Mr. Senior, and walked off—to his hotel, I suppose. Shadows! Shadows! I think I saw a white whisker as he turned under ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... attained to cosmic consciousness. Nothing more impresses the illumined mind, than the fact that the universe is One—uni—(one)—verse—(song)—one glorious harmony when taken in its entirety, but when broken up and segregated, and set at variance, we find discord, even as the score of a grand operatic composition when played in unison makes perfect harmony but when ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... by Mrs. McNabb that Splinterin' Andra was a dour old man. But he felt no apprehensions; his sunny smile and his charming manner had often swept away greater obstacles than this old fellow's crustiness. So he strode along in high spirits, flicking the tops off the wayside weeds, whistling a gay operatic air and incidentally wondering whether her eyes were blue ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... good-looking man," agreed Mr. Forbes, as he scrutinised the photographs. "But, Alicia, you mustn't fall in love with every operatic tenor you see. I believe this Coriell is a 'matinee idol,' but don't allow him to engage your ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... on a little. You did not talk or fuss; you yourself undertook the unaccustomed task of teaching my work to the people. Be sure that no one knows as well as I what it means to bring such a work to light in existing circumstances. Who the deuce does not conduct operatic rehearsals nowadays? You were intent not only upon giving the opera, but upon making it understood and received with applause. That meant to throw yourself into the work body and soul, to sacrifice body and soul, to press and exert every fibre ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... faltered Joan, unconsciously answering in English. "People who do not know Monsieur Poluski often take him for an operatic artiste. He is a painter. He sings only to amuse himself, and seldom waits to consider whether the time ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Hodgson,—I thank you for your song, or, rather, your two songs,—your new song on love, and your old song on religion. [1] I admire the first sincerely, and in turn call upon you to admire the following on Anacreon Moore's new operatic farce, [2] or farcical opera—call ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... climb down a long stairway amid swarms of pious, foul clustering beggars to a vast cavern, the archangel's abode. It is a natural recess in the rock, illuminated by candles. Here divine service is proceeding to the accompaniment of cheerful operatic airs from an asthmatic organ; the water drops ceaselessly from the rocky vault on to the devout heads of kneeling worshippers that cover the floor, lighted candle in hand, rocking themselves ecstatically and droning and chanting. A weird scene, in truth. And the coachman ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Salieri was greater than Mozart because Salieri's melodies were more like Hasse's in form. Perhaps the last act might be quite as exquisite on the stage, for it is even more exquisite in the score; but that we shall not know until our operatic singers abandon their vanity and their melodrama, and by reading an occasional book, and sometimes going out into the world, learn how much they themselves would gain if they always ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... see!" said Holmes. "Hum! Born in New Jersey in the year 1858. Contralto—hum! La Scala—hum! Prima donna Imperial Opera of Warsaw—yes! Retired from operatic stage—ha! Living in London—quite so! Your majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote her some compromising letters, and is now desirous of getting those ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... trousers, his coarse white shirt—the buttons of which were unfastened at the throat—and the collar loosely turned back, showing a bronzed chest, he looked like an operatic hero, the while he sat before his instrument and sang some of those wondrous songs dear to the heart of every Finn. He could hardly have been worthy of his land had he failed to be musical, born and bred in a veritable garden of song and sentiment, and the romance of our midnight ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... are artistically first rate. The fashion of calling English singers by Italian names is on the wane, otherwise Mr. ALBERT CHEVALIER, of French extraction, would find an excellent Italian alias, closely associated with the operatic and musical professions, and most appropriate to the line he has adopted, in the name of "SIGNOR COSTA." The melody of Mr. CHEVALIER's "Coster's Serenade," of which, I rather think, he is the composer as well as librettist, is as charming as it is strikingly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... manifestly impossible. But the professor imagines that the methods of calculation by which such results are obtained are the same as those employed by politicians in estimating their majorities on the eve of election day, by millionaires in paying their personal taxes, and by operatic sopranos in figuring out their age. The influence of a newspaper depends, of course, upon its circulation. Such influence is exercised directly in the form of news and editorial comment, and indirectly in the form of ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Rupert de Malvoisie (the Crusader) suggested, by his accent and gestures, that he must have come from the East—how far East, it boots not to inquire. Miss FLORENCE DARLEY was a good Lady Alice, and Mr. J. A. SHALE an efficient "Craven." Later on an operatic performance is threatened. If the thrilling series of arrangements on the back of the Programme is to be accepted as authentic, the members of the Club will be invited to have Patience. It would be difficult to find a more appropriate accessory to a Night with the Meistersingers. ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... "faultily faultless" person, the Mrs. Kendal, means nothing to me. The confusion can easily be made, and there will probably always be people who will prefer Mrs. Kendal to Miss Marlowe, as there are those who will think Mme. Melba a greater operatic singer than Mme. Calve. What Miss Marlowe has is a great innocence, which is not, like Duse's, the innocence of wisdom, and a childish and yet wild innocence, such as we might find in a tamed wild beast, in whom there would always be a charm far beyond that of the domestic creature ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... dissolute brother-in-law that Prince Igor left behind when he went to the wars, and Khan Konchak, most magnanimous of barbarians. Neither character gave scope for the particular subtlety of which (as he proves in Boris Godounov) M. CHALIAPINE is the sole master among male operatic singers. But to each he brought that gift of the great manner, that ease and splendour of bearing, and those superb qualities of voice which, found together, give him a place apart ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... slept in his shop-window at night without taking his clothes off. He was a gaunt man with a red nose, long but scanty black locks covered by a smoking-cap, and a luxuriant black moustache. He smoked a long clay pipe, and had the air of a broken-down operatic villain. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... her are the singer, Brignoli, and that man of orchestras, Theodore Thomas. The sepulchral Herman Melville enters, and saunters funereally across to Taylor, Stoddard, and Boker. Rachel and Brignoli are talking of the operatic failure at the Academy of Music under Manager Payne. They speak, too, of Mrs. Wood's success at Wallack's, and of Burton's reopening of the old Laura Keene Theatre, in Broadway across from Bond. Thomas mentions the accident at Niblo's the other evening, when Pauline Genet, of the Revel troupe, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... was a quorum of both Houses of Parliament in Homburg while the prince was there, but his presence also drew representatives from every department of English life, the bench and the bar, writers of eminence of both sexes, distinguished artists, and people famous on both the dramatic and the operatic stage. The prince, with keen discrimination, had these interesting people always about him. There were also social leaders, whose entertainments were famous in London, who did their best to add to the pleasure of the visit of the prince. I met him frequently and ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... a room fifteen feet square and perhaps ten high, with a sulky canary in a small gilt cage, an upright piano with an open operatic score, a sofa with piled-up cushions, and on it a woman with a flushed and sullen face, whose elbows were resting on her knees, whose chin was resting on her hand, whose gaze was fixed on nothing. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an operatic tenor—a regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We nearly burst with laughter at him; but when the sergeant ran up ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... was sung in such an operatic and rollicking way that it was quite hard to fancy it a religious performance, which, however, it was. I heard ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson |
