"Opera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Algiers, like the "Opera" in Paris, organises every Saturday night during the winter a Bal Masque,. This is, however, a provincial version. There are few people in the dance-hall; the occasional drifter from out of town, unemployed stevedores, some rustic tarts, who are in business but ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... on the greasy pavement. When he looked mechanically up into the sky he saw ragged, soot-colored clouds scudding in front of the moon. At this hour of the night passers-by were becoming few and far between in the Boulevard Haussmann. He skirted the enclosures round the opera house in his search for darkness, and as he went along he kept mumbling inconsequent phrases. That girl had been lying. She had invented her story out of sheer stupidity and cruelty. He ought to have crushed her head when he had it under his heel. After all ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... should begin with soup, be followed by fish, and include some kind of game. "The soup is to the dinner," we are told by Grisnod de la Regniere, "what the portico is to a building, or the overture to an opera." ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... 'Chivs'." King answered. "I shall ignore their challenges. This duelling habit is absurd. It's grandstand politics; opera bouffe. They even advertise their meetings and the boatmen run excursions to some point where two idiots shoot wildly at each other for some fancied slight. No, Coleman, I'm not that particular kind of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... with a flat candlestick and bowed off to bed, without being allowed a word to say for himself. All this is just the same as ever; there have been no alterations nor repairs; the piece is as curiously old-fashioned as are the exquisitely correct costumes; while the Masked Ball at the Opera and the Duel in the snow are as effective as ever, and the latter, if anything, more so. They make a first-rate fight of it, do Messrs. Irving dei Franchi and M. Terriss de Chateau Renaud, until the latter collapses, and "subsequent proceedings interested him no more." As long as the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... vigilantia, quo consilio recepit! Cum quidem me audiente Salinatori, qui amisso oppido fugerat in arcem, glorianti atque ita dicenti, 'mea opera, Q. Fabi, Tarentum recepisti', 'certe', inquit ridens, 'nam nisi tu amisisses, numquam recepissem'. Nec vero in armis praestantior quam in toga; qui consul iterum, Sp. Carvilio collega quiescente, C. Flaminio tribuno plebis, quoad potuit, restitit agrum Picentem et Gallicum viritim contra ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... instructions. I suspected that your intention was to sell the rest of the furniture; I have prevented it. There is a room at your disposal at St. Chrysostom's, in a house of mine, the first floor of which is occupied by La Tintoretta, our first opera dancer. Send all your things there, and come and dine with me every day. Your sister and your brothers have been provided with a comfortable home; therefore, everything is now arranged ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to converse of London; and he told me how often he had been at the opera when last in town,—and remarked what an exceedingly delightful fete champetre was lady somebody's entertainment of that sort. This occupied us until the boat returned, with a very civil request from the captain ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... reads, not skims, the daily paper; and if one's comments are leisurely, perhaps they are all the better. At any rate one is not tempted to see the end of the world in a strike, or a second Bonaparte in Signor d'Annunzio. To me that poet seems rather a comic-opera brigand. I suspect him of a green velvet jacket with a two-inch tail. But if you regard him sub specie eternitatis, then I fear we must see in him all Italy in epitome. That was how Italy went to war—but you must live in the country to understand things like that, out ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... ought to be completely happy. Last Thursday, at the Prince Czartoryski's ball, the prince royal danced with me alone. He came the day before to make us a visit, and yesterday, he sent his aid-de-camp to invite us to a representation of the Italian opera Semiramide, which is to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... went next day, in best bonnet and gown, to make a call upon the old lady "who was poorly," for that appeal could not be resisted. Rosy also, in honor of the great occasion, wore HER best hat, and a white frock so stiff that she looked like a little opera dancer as the long black legs skipped along the street; for it was far too grand a visit to be paid through ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... never to be raised again—where rumbling pony-carts crowd the pedestrians to the wall, the passage opens into gloomy dungeons, with barred windows looking out upon the stagnant waters of the moat. With an involuntary shudder, you pass on. A native policeman, in an opera-bouffe uniform, stands at the further end in order to dispatch the vehicles that can not pass each other in the narrow gate. Windowless, yellow walls, upon the corners of the streets, make reckless driving very dangerous, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... malefactor, carried off the opera-glass of the Princesse d'Arjos the evening she set down your young ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... should 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 ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... moment for the sake of making somebody angry. A Frenchman, who sadly misjudges Kate, looking at her through a Parisian opera-glass, gives it as his opinion—that, because Kate first records her prayer on this occasion, therefore, now first of all she prayed. I think not so. I love this Kate, blood- stained as she is; and I could not ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... are the best? Is it because it is the only country where you can get a good dinner, or because it is the only country where there are fine wines? Or is it because it is the only place where you can get a coat made, or where you can play without being cheated, or where you can listen to an opera without your ears being destroyed? Now, my dear Catch, you pass your life in dressing and in playing hazard, in eating good dinners, in drinking good wines, in making love, in going to the opera, and in riding fine horses. Of what, then, have you ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... MEIGS,—I attended the Centennial Ceremonies in honor of the Supreme Court yesterday, four full hours in the morning at the Metropolitan Opera House, and about the same measure of time at the Grand Banquet of 850 lawyers in the evening at the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... has always been a vital influence in man's aesthetic and emotional life. Drama, opera, comedy, and burlesque are variant forms, but they are alike in that they influence the audience. In the last decade the moving picture has greatly increased the power and influence of the theatre. The low price of the moving picture brings the theatre to millions who formerly ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... county 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
... no shadows for her wondering eyes; the shadows lay behind her. New York with its shops where with Ann she had gasped and laughed and colored and stared into mirrors, its lights, its crowds, its theaters, its opera where Max Kreiling sang and left her with a sob in her heart, its amazing Bohemia of success of which Kenny was a part, seemed to her but a never-ending sparkle of romance and kindness. She spent unwearied hours in Ann's studio, masquerading in ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... brought scenes in fashion in England; before at plays was only a hanging." Thus the Cockpit had the distinction of being the first English playhouse in which scenery was employed, and, one should add, the first English home of the opera.[616] ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... trolley cars, and the power-house is right by the Old Swimming-hole above the dam. The meeting-house, where we attended Sabbath-school, and marveled at the Greek temple frescoed on the wall behind the pulpit, is now a church with a big organ, and stained-glass windows, and folding opera-chairs on a slanting floor. There isn't any "Amen Corner," any more, and in these calm and well-bred times nobody ever ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... picturesque memories or scenes, there are few things more effective or pleasant to think of than one of these Sunday mornings in a strange unfamiliar French town, when every corner, and every house and figure—welcome novelty!—are gay as the costumes and colours in an opera. The night before it was, perhaps, the horrors of the packet, the cribbing in the cabin, the unutterable squalor and roughness of all things, the lowest depth of hard, ugly prose, together with the rudest buffeting and agitation, and poignant ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... threatened with a permanent stoop, and his eager eyes blinked wearily at breakfast, anxious to disprove certain accepted theories, and as eager to introduce others, unaffected, irreverent, and irresistibly buoyant. William could not hear an opera praised without dragging Susan off to gallery seats, which the lady frankly characterized as "smelly," to see if his opinion agreed with that of the critics. If it did not, Susan must listen to long dissertations upon the degeneracy of ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Heloisae conjugis ejus Epistolae, ab erroribus purgatae et cum codd. MSS. collatae cura Richardi Rawlinson, Londini, 1718, in-8. There is also an edition published in Paris in 1616, 4to, Petri Abelardi et Heloisae conjugis ejus, opera cum praefatione apologetica Franc. Antboesii, et Censura doctorum parisiensium; ex editione Andreae Quercetani (Andre Duchesne).] which asked one hundred and fifty-eight questions on all kinds of subjects. The famous champion of orthodoxy, St. Bernard, examined the book, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... 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
... paper-hanger "—they were furnishing their house. "Forwarding agents"—they were moving into it. The "Box-office of the Opera-house, No. 50,50"—they were newly married, and went to the opera on Sunday evenings; the most enjoyable hours of their lives were spent there, for they had to sit quite still, while their souls met in the beauty and harmony of the fairyland ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... Epiphany; they were quite music to the ear. Then the Psalms, varying with every Sunday; they were a perpetual solace to her, ever old yet ever new. The occasional additions, too—the Athanasian Creed, the Benedictus, Deus misereatur, and Omnia opera, which her father had been used to read at certain great feasts; and the beautiful Litany. What could he want more? where could he find so much? Well, it was a mystery to her; and she could only feel thankful that she was not ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... I followed, with eye and mind, the movements of the stage, Lafontaine was otherwise employed. His opera-glass was roving the boxes; and he continually poured into my most ungrateful ear remarks on the diplomatic body, and recognitions of the merveilleux glittering round the circle. At last, growing petulant at being thus disturbed, I turned to beg of him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... lifting to reveal the wide, bright depths, that half-concealed, half-revealed power, which is so tantalizing. Mae was dressed in this same spirit to-night, and she was dimly conscious of it. The masses of tulle that floated from her opera hat to her chin and down on her shoulders, revealed only here and there a glimpse of rich brown hair, or of white throat. Her cheeks were scarlet, her lips a-quiver with excitement and pleasure. She formed a pretty contrast to Edith, who ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... as essential to put the reader into good humor, as a good prologue is to a play, or a fine symphony is to an opera, containing something analogous to the work itself; so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified. The Italians call the preface—La salsa del libro—the sauce of the book; and, if well-seasoned, it creates an appetite in the reader ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Carl Maria von Weber's opera, "Der Freischutz," ought to begin with a study of the overture, since that marvellous composition has lived on and on in the concert-rooms of the world without loss of popularity for nearly a century, while the opera which it introduces has periodically come and gone according to popular whim ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... eventful a morning; and if any one had told him that his wife had been through a dozen stages of emotion, he would have laughed, and would have told his informant that Corona was not of the sort who experience violent passions. That evening they went to the opera together, and the old man was in an unusually cheerful humour. A new coat had just arrived from Paris, and the padding had attained a higher degree of scientific perfection than heretofore. Corona also ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... our Italian opera-singers bring to our shores those glorious physiques which formed the inspiration of Italian painters; and then American editors make coarse jokes about Barnum's fat woman, and avalanches, and pretend to be struck ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... idol of the mind, which he was perpetually caressing with the zeal of perverted judgment or monstrous taste. Once his frenzy ran against the Italian Opera; and in his "Essay on Public Spirit," he ascribes its decline to its unmanly warblings. I have seen a long letter by Dennis to the Earl of Oxford, written to congratulate his lordship on his accession to power, and the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... social condition of peace into that olden-time state of full war, when as in Sparta, or Rome, in her early days all things in life were done solely with reference to maintaining the army. With us it has been—is as yet—very different. The voice of the highly-paid opera-singer is still heard in our large cities—Newport and Saratoga never saw gayer seasons than those of 1862—splendor and luxury are still the life of thousands, and even yet there exists in the North a large political party who are so far from feeling that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he remarked with a smile. "For all that, you got a nasty knock, and your quitting for a time is justified. Well, if you feel lonesome, come along and dine at our hotel. Then we'll go and see the American opera. I'm told the show ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... shines in the authors of harlequinades and opera-buffa, is very commonly found even among men without education. In these days of carnival, when extravagance and caricature are admitted, the most comic scenes take place ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... with Tannhaeuser (plate 35), through Wagner's opera; therefore it is unnecessary to say more than that he was a real person, a minnesinger, and that the singing tournament at the Wartburg (the castle of the Thueringen family) really took place in 1206-07. This tournament, which Wagner introduces into his "Tannhaeuser," was a trial of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... a party of six in all, whereof I was the only woman, and we occupied a large box on the first tier near the stage, a position of prominence which caused me a certain embarrassment, when, as happened at one moment of indefinable misery, the opera glasses of the people in the dress-circle and stalls ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... doubt, that I wore my diamond bracelet to the opera last night. When I returned home I unclasped it from my arm, myself, and laid it carefully away in my jewel-box. This morning it is missing. My maid and I made a careful examination of the room where I am in the habit of keeping my jewels. We found that the room ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... instrument while over his eyes, or rather his eye, for he kept one closed as if it had been hermetically sealed, he had lashed with half a dozen turns of spun—yarn a wooden socket, like the but—end of an opera glass, fitted with some sort of magnifier, through which he peered out ahead most intensely, stooping down, and stretching his long bare neck to its utmost reach, that he might see under the foot of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... a personal interview: you have had, not one, but many. We have met, in society, talked face to face, discussed the weather, the opera, toilettes, Queechy, Aurora Floyd, Long Branch and Newport, and exchanged a weary amount of fashionable gossip; and you never guessed that I was governed by any deeper interest! I have purposely uttered ridiculous platitudes, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... after the incident on the prairie my father's Company was called to the firing line of the Civil War and the responsibilities of life fell suddenly upon me. There was a great gathering in town on the day the men marched away. Where the opera house stands now was the corner of a big vacant patch of ground reaching out toward the creek. To-day it was filled with the crowd come to see the soldiers and bid them good-bye. A speaker's stand was set up in the yard of the Cambridge House ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... and more favoured of the Mauleverer flock. All the girls liked this evening service at St. Dunstan's. It had a flavour of dissipation. The lamps, the music, the gaily decorated altar, the Saint's-day banners and processional hymn, were faintly suggestive of the opera. The change from the darkness of the country road to the glow and glitter of the tabernacle was thrilling. Evening service at St. Dunstan's was the most exciting event of the week. There was a curate who intoned exquisitely, with that melodious snuffle so dear to modern congregations, and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... all to me right here in this shack. It was acting itself to me up there in that ruined shack across the river, when you handed me your talk of Murray's purpose, only I guess I wasn't sitting in the front row, and hadn't the opera glasses ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... and tire your eyes, but that difficulty will pass in a short time. Expertness will soon be won in the use of a binocular, so that you will be able, almost instantly, to get the desired object within its field, even though the object be quite tiny. An opera glass is a great deal better than no glass at all; a field glass is better still, and a Bausch & Lomb binocular of six to eight magnifying power is the best of all; being almost equal to having the bird in hand. The observer must lose as little time as possible in sighting a shy bird, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... evening, Lord Warburton went again to see his friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they had gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying them a visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when he had obtained his admittance—it was one of the secondary theatres—looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act had just terminated and ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... see him again for six months, and had almost forgotten the incident when one night at the opera during a performance of "Tannhauser," a man, tall, square shouldered, entered the box where she was and was presented ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... put on our go-to-meetings, and yaller kid-skins, and sot off. There was a purty tidy fixin of shrubs and statooary as we went in (but nuthin ekal to the Bowery Saloon, New York!), and stairs up and stairs down, and gals in opera clokes ascendin and D-scendin. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... chatted about the enterprise that interested Cortlandt and Ayrault almost as much as Bearwarden himself. As the clock struck eleven, the president of the company put on his hat, and, saying au revoir to his friends, crossed the street to the Opera House, in which he was to read a report that would be copied in all the great journals and heard over thousands of miles of wire in every part of the globe. When he arrived, the vast building was already filled with a distinguished company, representing the greatest intelligence, wealth, and ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... when the bride came out, and as her sewing window was on the side of the house which faced the sunset, she passed a good part of each day looking into that great rustling mass, breathing in its succulent odors and listening to its sibilant melody. It was her picture gallery, her opera, her spectacle, and, being sensible,—or perhaps, being merely happy,—she made the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... nation there still was some life. Czech books were read more than ever, and the life of the national soul expressed itself in the performances in the National Theatre. When we heard about the storm of enthusiasm which greeted the prophecy in Smetana's opera Libusha, we felt suddenly relieved, and we knew that our sufferings were not ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... of modern music is laboured and heavy; that of the classics, impossible. In fact, virtuosity, if properly understood, is as indispensable to-day as ever it was. As much vocal virtuosity is required to interpret successfully the music of Falstaff, in Verdi's opera, as is necessary for Maometto Secondo or Semiramide by Rossini. It is simply another form of virtuosity; that is all. The lyric grace or dramatic intensity of many pages of Wagner's music-dramas ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... in the Coliseum, and I visited the interesting old church of St. Clement afterwards. Every evening, after a day spent in rambling among antiquities, we used to attend the opera in the Grand Opera House. It acted as a sort of relaxation after the serious business of sight-seeing. Rumours now reached us of the attack that our Division was making up in the Salient, and one night when I was having tea in the Grand Hotel ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... was selected from the Opera House; but the singularity most attractive consisted of an organ combined with a harpsichord, played by clock-work, which exhibited the movements of an orrery and air-pump, besides solving astronomical and geographical problems ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... went to the opera at one of the Casinos that night. It was "Rigoletto," and Gaeta and Paolo sat side by side, looking into each other's eyes during the love scene in the first act. But the Boy was adamant, and I did not turn a hair. He and I were much occupied in ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Van 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 ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... to feel the tread of it, the words had to roll like thunder. It is an advantage to me that I am full of Wagner; I always hear the music with my poetry. (I shall be disappointed if some one does not make an opera ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... writers who have in recent years given adequate attention and study to this music, that I know of, are Mr. H.E. Krehbiel and Mrs. Natalie Curtis Burlin. We have our native composers denying the worth and importance of this music, and trying to manufacture grand opera ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... was right, Elizabeth. I am positive I should spend any sum of money. What I need is a wife who can make money week by week, year by year—always something coming in; like an opera-singer, ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the opera, everything seems possible. Surely it is not necessary to choose between love and riches. One may have both, and the one all the more easily for having attained the other. It must be a fiction of the moralists ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Leslie the usher. For Levy is a man who has admitted the fiercer passions into his philosophy of life; he has not the pale blood and torpid heart which allow the scotched adder to dose away its sense of pain. Just as old age began to creep upon the fashionable usurer, he fell in love with a young opera-dancer, whose light heels had turned the lighter heads of half the eligans of Paris and London. The craft of the dancer was proof against all lesser bribes than that of marriage; and Levy married her. From that moment his ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slamming of cab-doors. The darkness was decorated by the pink of a silk skirt, the crimson of an opera-cloak vivid in the light of a carriage-lamp, with women's faces, necks, and hair. The women sprang gaily from hansoms and pushed through the swing-doors. It was Lubini's famous restaurant. Within the ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... perhaps, had been—two distinct, opposed processes of thought, two different personalities, a fact still admirably illustrated by his private interest in the doll, in Cytherea. Much younger he had been fond of music, of opera and then symphony concerts, and his university years had been devoted to a wide indiscriminate reading: sitting until morning with college men of poetic tendencies, he had discussed the intricacies of conduct in the light of beauty rather than prudence. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... train; but I was in the sleeper, and they did not see me until I got to New Orleans. I played poker in the sleeper all the way to the city, and did not lose very much as the game was small, and we played on the square. I met some of them at the opera the same night, and they had their opera glasses pointed at me for some time. I guess they wondered how I ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... tail. I would like you to make this little experiment. On a fine clear night, count how many stars there are within this oblong; they are all very faint, but you will be able to see a few, and, with good sight, and on a clear night, you may see perhaps ten. Next take your opera-glass and sweep it over the same region; if you will carefully count the stars it shows, you will find fully two hundred; so that the opera-glass has, in this part of the sky, revealed nearly twenty times as many stars as could be seen without its aid. As six thousand stars ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... of Turin is seen in the general survey of the town and its princely environs, particularly on the Moncaliere side. Our principal amusement was derived from Zuchelli's masterly performance at the Opera Buffa. The plot of the piece turned partly on the discomfitures and discontents of a supercilious English dandy, which part this singer performed with an immoveable countenance, which kept us in a roar of laughter, his ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... pleasure only to those who have learned to associate with their notes, in connection with the scenes of Nature, a thousand interesting and romantic images. To many persons of this character it affords more delight than the most brilliant music of the opera or the concert. In vain, therefore, will it be said, as an objection, that the notes of birds have no charm, save that which is derived from association, and that, considered as music, they do not equal that of the most simple reed or flageolet. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... does carry out her plan, I wish Maud to take lessons of her; Fanny can do as she likes, but it would please me very much to have one of my girls sing as Polly sings. It suits old people better than your opera things, and mother used to enjoy ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... self-broken in this manner. Poor soul, he came to the kaisership too early; was a thin violent creature, sensible to the charms and horrors of created objects; and had terrible rhinoceros ziskas and unruly horned cattle to drive. He was one of the worst kaisers ever known—could have done Opera Singing much better—and a sad sight to Bohemia. Let us leave him there: he was never actual Elector of Brandenburg, having given it up in time; never did any ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... he looked at Little White Barbara through an eye-glass and a magnifying glass and an opera-glass and a telescope, and then he said to Aunt Dosy and Aunt Posy: "You must go to London and buy her some Laughing Medicine. I will send her something to do her good ...
— Little White Barbara • Eleanor S. March
... is too little the practice in modern times. We incur debt, trusting to the future for the opportunity of defraying it. We cannot resist the temptation to spend money. One will have fine furniture and live in a high-rented house; another will have wines and a box at the opera; a third must give dinners and music-parties:—all good things in their way, but not to be indulged in if they cannot be paid for. Is it not a shabby thing to pretend to give dinners, if the real parties who provide them are the butcher, the poulterer, and the wine-merchant, whom you ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... believe, vastly greater in America than in England. This statement will undoubtedly be received with incredulity by the majority of Englishmen who know nothing about the United States; but no one who does know the people of the country will dispute it. In England, the opera is still, for all the changes that have occurred in the last quarter of a century, largely a pleasure of a limited class. It may be (and personally I believe) that in that class there is a larger number of true musicians who know the operas well ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... and if we put the job over, you can have the things a girl is supposed to like; for example, pretty clothes, opera tickets, a holiday at a fashionable summer hotel. They're things you ought ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... out the hour, the jovial face of the clock looking sterner than was its wont. It glowered now like a preacher in his pulpit upon a sinful congregation. Enough of "snatch-and-catch'em;" enough of Hull's Victory or the Opera Reel; let the weary fiddler descend from his bull-rush chair, for soon the touch of dawn will be seen in the eastern sky! The merry-making began to wane and already the sound of wagon-wheels rattled over the log road away from the tavern. Yes, they were singing, and, as Hepsibeth leaned her ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... mimicked good-humor; so that persons meeting with this old maid might very well take her for a kindly woman. She owned the house on shares with her brother. The brother, by-the-bye, was sleeping so tranquilly in his own chamber that the orchestra of the Opera-house could not have awakened him, wonderful as its ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... 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, fills ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... a little too absurd, to see the dying scene of Romeo and Juliet sung out in an opera!" remarked Lawrence Egerton, one morning; "all the music of the spheres could not have made that scene, last night, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... for the old gentleman, and sends him many merry and kind compliments and messages; and sends him, moreover, her new books as soon as they are out, most magnificently bound; but all won't do. He only says, "If she'd please me, she'd give up that cursed opera-box. Why, the rent of that thing—only to sit in and hear Italian women squealing and squalling, and to see impudent, outlandish baggages kicking up their heels higher than any decent heads ought to be—the rent, I say, would maintain a parish rector, or keep ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Marie-Aurore de Saxe. This was George Sand's grandmother. At the age of fifteen the young girl married Comte de Horn, a bastard son of Louis XV. This husband was obliging enough to his wife, who was only his wife in name, to die as soon as possible. She then returned to her mother "the Opera lady." An elderly nobleman, Dupin de Francueil, who had been the lover of the other Mlle. Verrieres, now fell in love with her and married her. Their son, Maurice Dupin, was the father of our novelist. The astonishing ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... floor stood an open trunk from which a fur-trimmed pale pink opera cloak hung carelessly. Beside the trunk in an attitude of homesickness huddled the young woman, hair dishevelled, eyes red. Her dress of green silk, embroidered stockings and beaded slippers looked out of place and at ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... drawers, panties, unmentionables; knickers, knickerbockers; philibeg[obs3], fillibeg[obs3]; pants suit; culottes; jeans, blue jeans, dungarees, denims. [brand names for jeans] Levis, Calvin Klein, Calvins, Bonjour, Gloria Vanderbilt. headdress, headgear; chapeau[Fr], crush hat, opera hat; kaffiyeh; sombrero, jam, tam-o-shanter, tarboosh[obs3], topi, sola topi[Lat], pagri[obs3], puggaree[obs3]; cap, hat, beaver hat, coonskin cap; castor, bonnet, tile, wideawake, billycock[obs3], wimple; nightcap, mobcap[obs3], skullcap; hood, coif; capote[obs3], calash; kerchief, snood, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... her cheeks seemed to make her eyes blaze as well, and it could not be denied she looked wonderfully pretty—or would look so at longer range, through opera glasses, perhaps. But in calm daylight there was something strange about her face. The short bronze hair, ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... squares, and statues, and modern houses (one of them so modern as to be employing a vacuum cleaner, which throbbed and panted in the garden as I passed); and the old mediaeval Nymwegen, gathered about one of the most charming market places in all Holland—a scene for comic opera. The Dutch way of chequering the shutters in blue and yellow (as at Middelburg) or in red and black, or red and white, is here practised to perfection. The very beautiful weigh-house has red and black shutters; the gateway which leads to ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... foreign-looking fellow, who 'lives but to adore the angel of beauty and perfection' at his side, and with whom the 'angel' is so blindly infatuated, is Signor Filippo Barbonne, a second-rate performer of the last season's opera troupe! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... could not get enough of them. Staring into the stilly radiance of the early evening and at the little gold and white flowers on the lawn, a thought came to him: This weather was like the music of 'Orfeo,' which he had recently heard at Covent Garden. A beautiful opera, not like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old days'—highest praise he could bestow. The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the name of "The Equine Paradox." He now has his beautiful animals in delightful summer quarters at Newport, where they are counted among the "notable guests." He has the Opera House there for his training school for three months, preparing new ones for next winter's exhibition, and keeping the old ones in practice. It is pleasant to know that he cares so faithfully for their health as to give them a home through ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... an opera, denotes that you will be entertained by congenial friends, and find that your immediate ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... interwoven with the plot. The author has shown remarkable dexterity in preserving the unity of the action so impressively, while dealing with such a variety of characters. Like a floating melody or tema in a symphony or an opera, the souvenirs of Estelle are introduced almost with the effect of pathetic music. Indeed, to those accustomed to look at plots as works of art, the constructive skill manifest in this novel will be not the least of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... powers I need not speak while there are so many now living that sat under the enchantment of his eloquence. A man who could crowd an opera house in London to listen to so unpopular a theme as temperance while a score or more of coroneted carriages were waiting about the door must have been no ordinary master of oratory. As an actor he might have been a second Garrick; as a preacher of the Gospel ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... that summer to be sojourning abroad, in the interval of a successful rebellion, was at the opera one night with some of his faithful followers. Burnamy had offered Mrs. March, who supposed that he merely wanted her and her husband with him, places in a box; but after she eagerly accepted, it seemed that he wished her to advise him whether it would do ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sixty-four, and bringing them together in one perfectly arranged volume.... His work is one simply invaluable to the general reading public. Technicalities are avoided, the aim being to give to musically uneducated lovers of the opera a clear understanding of the works they hear. It is description, not criticism, and calculated to greatly increase the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... call a grand opera voice," he commented, "but it ought to do all right for a chorus where economy is the chief point to be considered. Now, I'll tell you what to do. You go to-morrow straight to the O'Kelly, and put the whole ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... discuss present politics and past history. He was well versed in European history of the eighteenth century and the Napoleonic wars, and could talk about the power of Voltaire in literature and the influence of Lessing on Goethe. From appreciative discourse on the Wagner opera and the French drama, he could, if the conversation turned to the Civil War, give a lively account of the battles of Chancellorsville or Gettysburg, in both of which he had borne an honorable part. Sherman was not a cosmopolitan like his two colleagues, but he loved dining out. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... married! To be mistress of a house; settle in London (THAT she had quite determined long ago); be able to go out into the streets all alone, to shop, or visit; have a gentleman all her own, whom she could put her finger on any moment and make him take her about, even to the opera and the theatre; to give dinner-parties her own self, and even a little ball once in a way; to buy whatever dresses she thought proper, instead of being crippled by an allowance; have the legal right of speaking first in ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... a week since the party. Mrs. Hayden had been to the opera and returned late. Her husband was absent on a business trip, and she felt a vague uneasiness come over her as she entered the room. She knew not why, but it seemed unusually lonely without him. She seldom went out alone, but to-night she had gone out as much to while ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... opportunity of displaying her charms. Excitement was as necessary to Mrs. Arnold's nature as the air is necessary for the support of animal life. She was buoyed up by excitement and kept alive by excitement. Life was one giddy round of delights—the dejeuner fete, opera, and ball-room. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... home and everything heart could wish for—jewels, carriages, servants, opera boxes, and social position. Roger is a model husband apparently. I must also admit that he ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mine, and I have nothing to say in her disfavour. Though her appearance is disagreeable, we cannot control the operations of nature: and though her parents were disreputable (her father being a painter, several times bankrupt, and her mother, as I have since learned, with horror, a dancer at the Opera); yet her talents are considerable, and I cannot regret that I received her OUT OF CHARITY. My dread is, lest the principles of the mother—who was represented to me as a French Countess, forced to emigrate in the late revolutionary horrors; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Ward, in his regimentals, were inconsequential compared with the colonel. And his oration at the graves, after the bugles had blown taps, kept the multitude in tears for half an hour. John Barclay's address at the Opera House that afternoon—the address on "The Soldier and the Scholar"—was so completely overshadowed by the colonel's oratorical flight that Jane teased her husband about the eclipse for a month, and never could make him laugh. Moreover, the Banner that week printed the colonel's oration in ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... allegorically as the visits of a "demon." Russian society was moved to embody this imaginary demon in the person of a certain friend of Pushkin's. This must not be confounded with Lermontoff's poem bearing the same title upon which Rubinstein's new opera, "Il Demonio," is founded.] ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... maintained, in every case the air tails off into something that is much too near being tiresome. The plot, of course, is stupid to a degree, but plot has very little to do with it; what can be more uninteresting than the plot of many of Handel's oratorios? We both believe the scheme of Italian opera to be a bad one; we think that music should never be combined with acting to a greater extent than is done, we will say, in the Mikado; that the oratorio form is far more satisfactory than opera; and we agreed that we had neither of ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... sounded, and in a moment Daisy Dow and Bill Farnsworth appeared. They were in gay spirits, having been to see a new comic opera, which proved such a bore that they left before ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... Des Grieux, pere, a character that might be operatically nearly related to Germont, pere, in La Traviata, was impressively dramatic, but decidedly disappointing in his one great song, which ought to be a certain encore. It may be true that an opera intended for a small stage does not stand a fair chance of success on a large one, and vice versa, as no doubt the LORD MAYOR's coach provided by DRURIOLANUS SHERIFFUS for the occasion would look absurd on the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... is young, As we are, and so many splendid choices Lie all around him. There have never been Such opportunities as now are spread Before us. Men are doing mighty things To-day. A critic tells me that last night Wullf at the opera sang "La ci darem" With an artistic brilliancy of tone That never has been heard on any stage Anywhere in the world. You moped at home, Doubtless; but it was wonderful, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... her from him. It was rather a sense that safety lay in seeing as little of him as possible. And so, throughout the winter she had built about herself barriers of reserve. Yet there had never been a moment when he had dined with them, or when he had danced, or when he had shared their box at the opera, that she had not been keenly ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... back in Washington within three days. He would come to her hotel. They were to ride in the motor-car and they were to go to the theaters. She must meet his mother. His mother would take her to New York, and there would be the opera, and this, and that, and so on, for he was going to show her all the attractions of ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... interesting is the service! To one of us, at least, the grand service of Notre Dame of Paris was not so impressive as this. In the one case, a famous Bishop, robed in priceless lace and cloth of gold, with a troop of acolytes at the altar, while the most famous singers of the Opera filled the vast structure with rapturous melody; in the other, a large plain wooden building with glaring windows of untinted glass; the priest in vestments of coarse Nottingham lace and yellow damask,—but with spiritual, benignant countenance,—and a choir of untrained voices. ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... by the hundred and football games by the score—all the known varieties of football games too, Gaelic, Soccer, Rugby and others; and coal black West Indian negroes in white flannels, with their legs buskined like the legs of comic opera brigands, play at cricket, meanwhile shouting in the broadest of British accents; and there is tennis on the tennis courts and boating on the lake near-by and golf on the links that lie beyond the lake. Also, in odd corners, there are all manners ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... departure in our common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the supposition that we make, I presume because we think it pious, that if they are both Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at home at a millionaire's dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at the Metropolitan opera house. Suppose we drop the attempt to force people together on lines which will be impossible till after the social revolution has buried us all in a common grave, and fasten attention on the one ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... infidelity of simplicity, their skepticism of motives and of men. Youths, whose younger years were fervid with the resolution to strike and win, to deserve, at least, a gentle remembrance, if not a dazzling fame, are content to eat, and drink, and sleep well; to go to the opera and all the balls; to be known as "gentlemanly," and "aristocratic," and "dangerous," and "elegant;" to cherish a luxurious and enervating indolence, and to "succeed," upon the cheap reputation of having been "fast" ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... civil—a greater contrast to the 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 ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the first, Blow High, Blow Low, was sung in The Seraglio (1776), a forgotten opera; the second, said to have been inspired by the death of the author's brother, a naval officer, in The Oddities (1778)—a 'table-entertainment,' where Dibdin was author, actor, singer, musician, accompanist, everything but audience and candle-snuffer. They are among the first in time ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... cause he had espoused, should any insolent slanderer dare to hint there was a smirch on her virtue. Being deaf to all reports, he seemed one of those men expressly framed by heaven to be the consolation of fallen women; such a man as in our times a retired opera-dancer or a superannuated professional beauty would welcome with open arms. He had only one fault—he was married. It is true he neglected his wife, according to the custom of the time, and it is probably also true that his wife cared very little about his infidelities. But ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... gleam on the tumultuous waters, Eva looked from her window with sleepless eyes, thinking sadly and bitterly of the past and future. Suddenly a dark figure appeared on the beach in the track of the moonlight. She snatched an opera-glass, but could not recognize the solitary form. The thought would come, however, that it was Ackland; and if it were, what were his thoughts and what place had she in them? Why was he watching so near the spot that ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... bread-fruit, cocoanuts, and plantains, dressed after the native fashion. The natives ate some of the fish raw, a feat the Englishmen could not accomplish. The general harmony was interrupted by Dr Solander and Mr Monkhouse finding that their pockets had been picked, the one of an opera glass, the other of his snuff-box. Mr Banks on this started up and struck the butt end of his musket violently on the ground. On this, most of the people ran away, but the chief remained. To show his concern, and that he had nothing to do with the theft, he offered Mr Banks ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... case I have hopes," he returned. "When a woman makes up her mind to do one thing, she generally does another. Why can't you put aside this fool idea and go to the opera with me?" ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... come to a sympathetic understanding of the place of the drama and the opera, to see what they have meant in the education of the race and what is the significance, to us, of the fact of the strong dramatic instinct in childhood. Naturally the subject can only be mentioned here and the suggestion be offered that parents take time to cultivate an ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... stand still for a second glimpse and a clue to the nest; but the mosquitos! Things have come to a bad pass with the bird-hunter, whose only gun is an opera-glass, when he cannot stand stock-still for an hour. His success depends upon his ability to take root. He needs light feet, a divining mind, and many other things, but most of all he needs patience. There are few mortals, however, with mosquito-proof patience—one ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Min's wedding; she was going to make candy and they could come in. She packed delicious suppers, to be eaten in cool places by the creek, and to be followed by their smoking and her careless snatches of songs; she played poker quite as well as they; she played old opera scores and sang to them; she had jig-saw puzzles for slow evenings. She could not begin a game of what Mrs. Tolley called "halmy," with that good lady, without somehow attracting the boys to the table, where they hung, championing and criticising. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... told the Duke that I was trying to entice his work-people because I was quite incapable of setting up so great a statue by myself. I complained to the Duke of the annoyance which the brute gave me, and begged him to allow me some of the labourers from the Opera. [1] My request inclined him to lend ear to Bandinello's calumnies; and when I noticed that, I set about to do my utmost by myself alone. The labour was enormous: I had to strain every muscle night and day; and just then the husband of my sister sickened, and died after a few days' illness. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... British Majesty. A youth of nineteen may be, perhaps, too fond of playing a trick upon the king he is going to fight with,—of dancing at the house of Lord Germaine minister for the English colonies, and at the house of Lord Rawdon, who had just returned from New York,—and of seeing at the opera that Clinton, whom he was afterwards to meet at Monmouth. But whilst I concealed my intentions, I openly avowed my sentiments; I often defended the Americans; I rejoiced at their success at Trenton; and my spirit of ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... called about him all his former acquaintances,—a physician without a diploma, a poet who never published, an opera singer without an engagement,—all of whom were in a state of constant indignation against the world which refused to ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... favourable. One night we went to the opera to hear a celebrated prima donna. When we returned home Miriam and I were sitting in her room, chatting over the events of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Grand Opera season opened to Mrs. Hawley-Crowles another avenue for her astonishing social activities. With rare shrewdness she had contrived to outwit Mrs. Ames and secure the center box in the "golden horseshoe" at the Metropolitan. There, like a gaudy garden spider in its glittering web, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... would, if I was you, sir," said Jones severely. "If you take my advice, you'll say good-bye to your friend here, and go back indoors. Perhaps you are not aware that you are walking about with nothing on but a night-shirt and a pair of boots and an opera-hat. Where's your trousers?" ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 shore had blown over and drifted ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... to their homes, and the would-be scalpers were seen no more, leaving the world to darkness and to us in the woods. The woods, where Adam and Eve lived and loved, where Pan piped, and Satyrs danced, the opera house of birds; the woods, green, imparadisaical, mystic, tranquillizing—to the poet perhaps when all is well—but to us, they seemed haunted by spirits of evil, the yells of the demons seemed to echo and reecho; but an indefinable something seemed to sympathize ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss |
