"Libretto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... window projected the heroic head and shoulders of my hostess, and there boomed into the already vivacious libretto a passionate barytone, or thereabout, of ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... picturesque dwelling, but scanty in domestic comforts. The first of the Comic Annual series was brought out at Christmas, 1830. In the following couple of years, Hood did some theatrical work; writing the libretto for an English opera which (it is believed) was performed at the Surrey Theatre. Its name is now unknown, but it had a good run in its day; a similar fate has befallen an entertainment which he wrote for Mathews. He also composed a pantomime for the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... if the tenor always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... of a peculiar and extraordinary kind. Education he had none: he was unable to write the commonest letter, and did not know a note of music; yet he would give his composers the most valuable hints, and dictate with admirable skill the plan of a libretto. His own voice was of the harshest and most inharmonious texture; but by his advice and instructions he formed some of the first singers in Italy. His language was a Milanese patois; but he found means to make himself excellently understood by the kings and emperors, with whom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... any emotional associations, for the United Kingdom itself. No Englishman is stirred by the name 'British,' the name 'English' irritates all Scotchmen, and the Irish are irritated by both alike. Our national anthem is a peculiarly flat and uninspiring specimen of eighteenth-century opera libretto and opera music. The little naked St. George on the gold coins, or the armorial pattern on the silver coins never inspired any one. The new copper coinage bears, it is true, a graceful figure of Miss Hicks Beach. But we have made it so small and ladylike ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... the writer of the libretto of Tempesta, just brought out in London, at the age of eighteen years, was placed under the care of M. Dupin, now the President of the French Legislative Assembly, to study the Roman law. Shortly ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... which he had thoughtfully provided himself. To gratify my curiosity he read me the tale of Susanna and the Elders. Being young, my first notion was that I had chanced on a capital subject for an opera; and I actually thought for ten minutes of commencing at once on a libretto. Later I remembered the censor, and realised for the first time that in England, when a subject is unfit for a drama, it is treated as an oratorio. As soon as possible I bought Handel's "Susanna" instead, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... doctrine of the concurring impulses of circumstance, or of natural laws, but rather the stupendously nonsensical notion of the Arabian kismet, that from the beginning of time every event was fore-arranged as in a fairy tale, and that all which is, is simply the acting out of a libretto written before the play began—a belief revived in the last century by readers of Leibnitz, who were truer than the great German himself to the consequences of his doctrine, which he simply evaded.[15] In coupling ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... world-comedy, limiting themselves to no set of funny subjects, finding inspiration in the habits and manners of men and women at large. 'HE WON HER' is the title appended to a picture of a young lady and gentleman seated in a drawing-room, and the libretto runs thus: 'Mabel: Last night I dreamt of a most beautiful woman. Harold: Rather a coincidence. I dreamt of you, too, last night.' I have selected this as a typical example of the larger style. This style, however, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Book. — N. booklet; writing, work, volume, tome, opuscule[obs3]; tract, tractate[obs3]; livret[obs3]; brochure, libretto, handbook, codex, manual, pamphlet, enchiridion[obs3], circular, publication; chap book. part, issue, number livraison[Fr]; album, portfolio; periodical, serial, magazine, ephemeris, annual, journal. paper, bill, sheet, broadsheet[obs3]; leaf, leaflet; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of the Wild Ass. There are operas in which at certain moments the libretto speaks of a leaping fire, the music plays leaping fire, and the fire actually leaps and blazes on the stage. But unfortunately it always happens that the words cannot be heard because of the orchestra, ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... libretto, the wood-nymphs, terrified by a hunting- party, ran to take refuge with the water-nymphs. The water-nymphs were late likewise. The dryads came suddenly through Mrs. Noxon's imported shrubs, puncturing them with rhythmic attitudes. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... libretto, humming down into it between acts and leaping ahead to verify her memory ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... is a cantata about the Britons and the Danes. There is a Druid priestess who sings of Cynthia and Endymion, and a chorus of jubilant Vikings. It is charmingly printed, and as a libretto for music quite ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of two kinds, and one supplements the other. The human voice supplies the libretto, while the accompaniment is provided by a syncopated and tympanum-piercing ping-ping, suggestive of a giant ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... editions of the same work; and sometimes the confusion is complicated by different versions having been prepared by the composer himself. This is notably the case with Gluck's Orphee, first written to an Italian libretto by Calzabigi and produced at Vienna. When Marie Antoinette called her former Viennese singing-master, Gluck, to Paris, she gave him an opportunity of displaying his genius by facilitating the production ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... expect to reach the goal here so very soon but must prepare myself. A libretto of Scribe or Dumas I cannot set to music. If I ever do reach the right goal in this Parisian hunt, I shall not compass it in the common way; I must in that case create something new, and that I can achieve only by doing it all myself. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... about Lisa, then of music again. He seemed to enunciate his words more slowly when he spoke of Lisa. Lavretsky turned the conversation on his compositions, and half in jest, offered to write him a libretto. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... beginning to operate once more in its normal fashion when we were told that the whole company would now "join hands and move around in a circle" to music. The entire jury sensed that the crucial moment had come. We saw boys and girls alternating, hand held in hand—and all to the undeniably secular libretto of "Looby-Loo." It was, moreover, noted with inward pain that many of the little feet actually left the ground. We adjourned to an adjacent fish stage to discuss the matter. I need not dilate on the vicissitudes of the session. It was clear that all ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... defect in the libretto of Patience is the decentralisation of interest in the second act. The alert ones who remembered that in that act the heroine has only one song, and certain passages of dialogue not remarkable for dramatic force, had ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... suggesting Erie shares by its watered music and morals; but there is no doubt that Tostee's grand reception was owing mainly to the personal favor which she enjoyed here and which we do not vouchsafe to every one. Ristori did not win it; we did our duty by her, following her carefully with the libretto, and in her most intense effects turning the leaves of a thousand pamphlets with a rustle that must have shattered every delicate nerve in her; but we were always cold to her greatness. It was not for Tostees singing, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... advanced. How long they would have put up with this from a plain girl I do not know, but Lanty's short upper lip seemed framed for indolent and fascinating scorn, and her dreamy eyes usually looked beyond the questioner, or blunted his bolder glances in their velvety surfaces. The libretto of these scenes was ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte |
