"Comic opera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was no good. That is true, but still I was not exactly a comic opera villain. I had led an easy-going reckless life, taking what invited me of pleasure, deploring and sometimes bitterly regretting consequences. In one thing alone, except my painting, was I serious, and that was something which ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... cleverest adapters of the times—and the rest of that glorious monument to human credulity and memorial to an impossible, wholly apocryphal genius, known as the works of William Shakespeare. The extent of my writing during this incarnation was ten autographs for collectors, and one attempt at a comic opera called "A Midsummer's Nightmare," which was never produced, because no one would write the music for it, and which was ultimately destroyed with three of my quatrains and all of Bacon's evidence against my authorship of "Hamlet," in the fire at the ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... to the illusion. There used to be a saying that cross-eyed people could not be honest. Similarly, perhaps, Newman thought the appearance of bow-legs would increase the villainy of his pirate. Certainly, no such blood-curdling ruffian has been seen out of comic opera. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... he started away he Kissed her, and it wasn't any Make-Believe such as you see in Comic Opera. It was a genuine Olga Nethersole Buss, full of Linger and Adhesion. To cap the Climax he said he would stop ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... abstinence as prohibition may be made endurable through fictional substitutes. After listening to a drinking chorus in a comic opera and watching the amusing antics of the chief comedian who is ever so inebriated we are almost persuaded to stay dry. Prohibition is perhaps the climax of censorship. It has the advantage over other forms of suppression in that at least it represents a sensible ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... Thus, in succession, seven other companies arrived, forming the fifth, battalion of Navarre, a vigorous, wiry set of men, impressing the experienced eye as excellent raw material for soldiers, albeit got up in costume very much resembling that of brigands of the Comic Opera. Physically, the natives of the hilly northern provinces are the pick of Spain. The battalion had its flag, white between two stripes of scarlet, on which was inscribed the name of the corps, and the legend, "The ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Field objected on the ground that it would be shortened into Frankie, which he disliked. Then other names were suggested, and, after listening to this one and that one, Field finally said: "You can christen her whatever you please, but I shall call her Trotty." "Pinney" was named from the comic opera "Pinafore," which was in vogue at the time he was born; and "Daisy" got his name from the song, popular when he was born: "Oh My! ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... fortune was transient. The symphony was duly performed, and dismissed in the papers as promising, if over-ambitious; the only tangible result was a suggestion from the popular composer, who was a member of his club, that Lancelot should collaborate with him in a comic opera, for the production of which he had facilities. The composer confessed he had a fluent gift of tune, but had no liking for the drudgery of orchestration, and, as Lancelot was well up in these tedious technicalities, the two might strike a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... to himself, was always expressed with equal generosity. In a company of critics, who discovered that there were faults in Mozart's operas, Haydn, when appealed to, replied—"All I know is, that Mozart is the greatest composer now existing." When applied to in 1787, to write a comic opera, Haydn thought a new subject, or libretto, would be necessary, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... composed by one Biffi; a French melodrama, "L'Enfant Prodigue," by Morange about 1810; a German piece of similar character by Joseph Drechsler in Vienna in 1820. Pierre Gaveaux, who composed "Leonore, ou l'Amour Conjugal," which provided Beethoven with his "Fidelio," brought out a comic opera on the subject of the Prodigal Son in 1811, and Berton, who had also dipped into Old Testament story in an oratorio, entitled "Absalon," illustrated the parable in a ballet. The most recent settings of the theme are also the most significant: Auber's five-act opera "L'Enfant Prodigue," ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hit in this old-time concert-hall when she was a sweet young thing in her teens. One of her naughty stunts was kickin' her slipper into an upper box, and gettin' it tossed back with a mash note in it, or maybe a twenty-dollar bill. Then she'd graduated into comic opera. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... his foul score [i.e. rough copy] of a mind disturbed, if not diseased. There are more passages, and even whole pages, cancelled in this score, than in any one of all his former operas." Serse, it must be explained, is a comic opera, and the only comic opera that Handel ever wrote. What induced him to attempt this style it is difficult to conceive. It is of course true that the failure of Handel's earlier operas was largely due to the success of The Beggar's Opera (1728), and of other comic entertainments which succeeded ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... be too careful," Aiken said as he reseated himself. "Of course, the whole thing is a comic opera, but if they suspect you are working against them, they're just as likely as not to make it a tragedy, with you in the star part. Now I'll explain how I got into this, and I can assure you it wasn't through any love of liberty with me. The consular agent here is a man named Quay, and ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... the violins shook his head, however. He had been there twenty years, and he had never before heard of such singing in comic opera. ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... lose your money, Wally," she said, coming down the remaining stairs, "we'll take up comic opera." Curtseying low she simpered, "My lord!" and gave him her hand ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... was awful severe. [To VERA] He only allows me comic opera once a week. My wife calls him the ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... 1. The music of Mendelssohn's comic opera "The Wedding of Camacho" given by Theodore Thomas, ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... subsidy. Thus arose the civil war of the Fronde, one of the most extraordinary contests in history, whose name is derived from the puerile street fights with slings, of the printers' devils and schoolboys of Paris. The incidents of the war read like scenes in a comic opera. A hundred thousand armed citizens were besieged by eight thousand soldiers. The evolution of a burlesque form of cavalry, called the corps of the Portes Cocheres, formed by a conscription of one horseman for every house ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... duel with Mr. Whistler, as Mr. Whistler well knows. First, only under the very gravest circumstances, if under any at all, would an Englishman accept a challenge to a duel. The duel has been relegated to the realms of comic opera. As for inviting me to proceed to Belgium for the purpose of fighting him, he might as well ask me to strip myself naked and paint my face and stick feathers in my hair—dress myself as a Redskin, in fact, and walk down St. James's Street flourishing ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... comic opera, vaudeville or revues because he feels they serve no practical purpose and get him nowhere. This type does not attend the theater merely to be amused. He goes for light on his everyday experiences and usually considers time wasted that ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... music to celebrate coffee. Brittany has its own songs in praise of coffee, as have other French provinces. There are many epics, rhapsodies, and cantatas—and even a comic opera by Meilhat, music by Deffes, bearing the title, Le Cafe du Roi, produced at the Theatre Lyrique, November ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... hollow cheeks and a thin grey beard; for the weariness of expression which was habitual to him vanished before the charming sympathy of his smile. His sunken eyes glittered with a kindly but ironic good-humour. Now passed a guard in the romantic cloak of a brigand in comic opera and a peaked cap like that of an alguacil. A group of telegraph boys in blue stood round a painter, who was making a sketch—notwithstanding half-frozen fingers. Here and there, in baggy corduroys, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... a certain manager who had lost a great deal of money in comic opera. Frohman said to him that he heard that there was much money in the comic-opera end ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... It suggested comic opera with a large number of pretty chorus girls, but I could not help being impressed in spite of this thought with the fact that Jupiter knew how to do a thing up in style. I was indeed so awed with it all that I did not dare wink at a single Amazon while en route, although strongly tempted ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... thus forced into the service and made a prisoner to boot—however temporary it might be—I gradually began to see the humour of the situation. It was very like a comic opera, I thought, as I lay flat on the edge of the thicket and pried away a small opening in the tangle through which I could look down upon the sweep of beach below me and far out to sea. Thus I lay in wait for the smuggling crew ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... write to his father: "The people are daft over my opera." Here, at the very outset, Mozart's humor, the golden one of all the gifts with which Mother Nature had endowed him, was called into play. With this work German comic opera took its beginning. As has been remarked "although it has been imitated, it has never been surpassed in its musically comic effects." The delightfully Falstaffian figure of Osmin, most ingeniously characterized ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... I think, be no question that a large number of European people have formed their estimate of Japanese women either from a visit to a comic opera such as "The Geisha," or from a perusal of a book like Pierre Loti's fascinating work, "Madame Chrysantheme." This is in effect the story of a liaison between a man and a Japanese girl of the lower classes, ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... composer (say, of the name of Jimson) might very well suffer, like Hogarth's musician before him, from the disturbances of London. He might very well be pressed for time to finish an opera—say the comic opera Orange Pekoe—Orange Pekoe, music by Jimson—'this young maestro, one of the most promising of our recent English school'—vigorous entrance of the drums, etc.—the whole character of Jimson and his music arose in bulk before ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... in hand; a harbor flecked with white, triangular sails of native velas; and the river, where the coasting boats and tugs are lying at the docks. Neat cattle take the place of carabaos here to a great extent. There is the usual stone fort that seems to belong to some scene of a comic opera. America was represented here by a Young Men's Christian Association, a clubhouse, and a presidente. The troops then stationed in the town added a ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... stamp of an age in which the State is almost nothing and society almost everything. We may on this principle divine what order of talent was required in the ministers. M. Necker, having given a magnificent supper with serious and comic opera, "finds that this festivity is worth more to him in credit, favor, and stability than all his financial schemes put together. . . . His last arrangement concerning the vingtieme was only talked about for one day, while everybody ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... men who treated it at various times were the Spaniard known as Tirza di Molina, the Frenchman Moliere, the Italian Goldoni, and the Englishman Thomas Shadwell, whose "Libertine Destroyed" was brought forward in 1676. Before Mozart, Le Tellier had used it for a French comic opera, Righini and Gazzaniga for Italian operas, and ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... called upon her as often as she would allow. Once he had prevailed upon her and Page to accompany him to the matinee to see a comic opera. He had pronounced it "bully," unable to see that Laura evinced only a mild interest in the performance. On each propitious occasion he had made love to her extravagantly. He continually protested his profound respect with ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... attempts at the serious drama, he had tried to turn to account his musical faculty by writing both the book and the score of a comic opera, which had, however, been rejected by the Comedie-Italienne (the predecessor of the present Opera Comique). After a while Beaumarchais cut out his music and worked over his plot into a five-act comedy in prose, 'The Barber of Seville.' It was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... what is in the wind, Winifred? Professor Black, who leads the choir in the Linden Street church, is going to get up a comic opera with a cast from the various choirs, and I am invited. We are to go to Northville and give it in the little one-horse theater there. Won't it be gay? We shall astonish the natives of that small town! Have you ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... of diamond robbers or comic opera bandits in this city I'll bet my hand they could steal the sidewalks without being detected, much less captured. A scheme to rob all of Mrs. Garrison's guests! ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... recalls the fact that Field once seriously contemplated writing a comic opera; and he only failed to carry out his purpose because he could not get the dialogue to suit him; moreover, he realized that he had but a limited grasp of the dramatic action and situations necessary in such work. How completely ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... place, and accordingly strolled about in that neighbourhood. She came bravely enough to the showy entrance way, with the polished and begilded lobby, set with framed pictures out of the current attraction, leading up to the quiet box-office, but she could get no further. A noted comic opera comedian was holding forth that week, and the air of distinction and prosperity overawed her. She could not imagine that there would be anything in such a lofty sphere for her. She almost trembled at the audacity which might have carried ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... curves and convolutions and other flourishes, a perfect bower of painted and gilded and moulded conceits. The second ground of this immediate impression of scenic extravagance, almost as if the curtain rose for him to the first act of some small and expensively mounted comic opera, was that she hadn't, after all, awaited him in fond singleness, but had again just a trifle inconsiderately exposed him to the drawback of having to reckon, for whatever design he might amiably entertain, with the presence of a third and ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... collection of Watts's Literary Souvenirs—"I have the whole eleven volumes now——" And he had been a guest at two charming house-parties in the country, and at one of them had been given the full responsibility of rehearsing a comic opera in the late eighteenth-century style. "Amateurs, of course. But I was so bent on realizing the flavour of the period, that I'm indeed afraid that I did not draw a clear enough line between the deliciously robust ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... who had a rather good voice, went on the stage, in the comic opera line, and, in consequence, her habits and associates changed somewhat; and, as Harold had meanwhile become engaged, he was naturally anxious to get his letters back, and especially to exchange the locket for some less compromising gift. The letters she eventually sent him, but refused absolutely ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Since the death of the officer he has taken command of the Chinese detachment. He and Ghangir are on guard over the imperial treasure, and according to Caterna, who is never in want of a quotation from some comic opera: ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... English, but the caricature of an officer concealed his ignorance before his fellows by pretending to read them and at length gave me a surly permission to withdraw. No wonder Central America is a favorite locale for comic opera librettos. ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... figure, with coarse red hands. She doted on ice-cream in the summer, and hot chocolate in the winter, but her love of the theatre was a perennial passion. Both Sam and she had good ears, and were always first in the field with the latest comic opera tunes. Leah's healthy vitality was prodigious. There was a legend in the Lane of such a maiden having been chosen by a coronet; Leah was satisfied with Sam, who was just her match. On the heels of Sam came several ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... no, don't go there. Seville: it brings to the mind girls dancing with castanets, singing in gardens by the Guadalquivir, bull-fights, orange-blossom, mantillas, mantones de Manila. It is the Spain of comic opera and Montmartre. Its facile charm can offer permanent entertainment only to an intelligence which is superficial. Theophile Gautier got out of Seville all that it has to offer. We who come after him can only repeat his sensations. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... smile]—give me the worst. [The Prince making passes in the air, tierce and thrust with his cane at an imaginary foe] I say, dear Prince, tell me the worst—I think I can bear it. [Helene is almost amused by the sight of the semi-comic opera-bouffe prince] Tell me ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... of indignation swept the columns of the rank and file. They didn't want the grand duke themselves, but they didn't want Blakely's mother to have him; Blakely's mother and Mrs. Sanderson-Spear, and Mrs. Tudor Carstairs. In a way, it was better than a comic opera; it was fearfully amusing. ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... way through the French-window, and linked arms with Rose, whilst the two strange figures followed like a couple of characters in a comic opera. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... pestilence or the like. We came out here, pitched on the STAR and GARTER (they call it Somebody's pavilion), found the place a bed of lilacs and nightingales (first time I ever heard one), and also of a bird called the PIASSEUR, cheerfulest of sylvan creatures, an ideal comic opera in itself. 'Come along, what fun, here's Pan in the next glade at picnic, and this-yer's Arcadia, and it's awful fun, and I've had a glass, I will not deny, but not to see it on me,' that is his meaning as near as I can gather. Well, the place ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a comic opera by R. B. Sheridan (1773). Margaret, the duenna, is placed in charge of Louisa, the daughter of Don Jerome. Louisa is in love with Don Antonio, a poor nobleman of Seville; but her father resolves to give her in marriage to Isaac Mendoza, a rich Portuguese ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... grand-duchies, a large number of duchies and hundreds of margravates, principalities, baronies, electorates, free cities and free villages, ruled by the strangest assortment of potentates that was ever seen off the comic opera stage. Frederick the Great had changed this when he created a strong Prussia, but this state had not survived him by ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... bought my boat (I come, in time, to be willing to sell it again for half its cost to me), I require a menial to clean it now and then, and Giovanna first calls me a youthful Gobbo for the work,—a festive hunchback, a bright-hearted whistler of comic opera. Whether this blithe humor is not considered decent, I do not know, but though the Gobbo serves me faithfully, I find him one day replaced by a venerable old man, whom—from his personal resemblance to Time—I should think ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... francs; then his employers raised it to as much as fifty louis. For the first of the Discourses the publisher gave him nothing, and for the second he had to extract his fee penny by penny, and after long waiting. His comic opera, the Village Soothsayer, was a greater success; it brought him the round sum of two hundred louis from the court, and some five and twenty more from the bookseller, and so, he says, "the interlude, which cost me five or six weeks of work, produced nearly ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... accompaniment of comedy lend it a strong flavor of the opera bouffe and even of the musical comedy of to-day. In Part II we shall draw numerous other parallels between this style of composition and the plays of Plautus. West, in A.J.P. VIII. 33, notes one of the few comparisons to "comic opera" that we have seen. Fay, in the Introduction to his ed. of the Most. (Sec. 11), likens Plautine drama to "an opera of the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... too. And because,' he shouted wrathfully, 'because, forsooth, she earns an honest living by singing in the chorus of a comic opera, a whole bunch of snivelling idiots will say I have made a fool of myself. Let them!' he bellowed, sitting up and glaring at Rollo. 'I say, let them! I'll show them that Andrew Galloway is not the man to—to—is not the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... up to be hit. Max, the Joos' cousin, went out and "tirait," to the admiration of the women-kind, and then, of course, "Papa" had to have a try. The two men, with their little gun and their talk and gesticulations, lent a queer touch of comic opera to the scene. The garden was so small, the men in their little hats were so suggestive of the "broken English" scene on the stage, that one could only stand ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... which he was about to fire his musket, he felt not the slightest hatred for the Garibaldians, individually or collectively. They were extremely picturesque in the landscape, with their flaming shirts and theatrical hats. They looked very much as though they had come out of a scene in a comic opera, and it seemed a pity to destroy anything that relieved the dismal grayness of the November day. As he stood there he felt much more like the artist he was, than like a soldier, and he felt a ludicrously strong desire to step aside and seat himself upon a stone wall in ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Let this "Comic Opera," for so is it described in the bills, be cut down as ruthlessly, but not as blindly, as William cut down Crosstree; let something catching be substituted for most of the music of the First Act,—specially omitting the "Why, certainly!" interpolation, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... first shocking and then tedious; to the good people of Madrid it is a sermon, full of absolute truth and vivid reality. The class of persons who attend these spectacles is very different from that which you find at the Royal Theatre or the Comic Opera. They are sober, serious bourgeois, who mind their shops and go to mass regularly, and who come to the theatre only in Lent, when the gay world stays away. They would not dream of such an indiscretion as reading the Bible. Their ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... little man with a will of iron and a friendly heart. But he laughed silently now as he saw Kingsley approaching; the situation was so beautifully invented. It did not seem quite like a thing in real life. In any other country than Egypt it would have been comic opera—Foulik Pasha and his men so egregiously important; Kingsley so overwhelmed by the duty that lay before him; the woman in a whimsically embarrassing position with the odds, the laugh, against her, yet little likely to take the obvious view of things ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in April of the previous year (1847) that Roger went to a concert, where he records how he heard a comic opera called The Alcove, by Offenbach and Deforges: "A little inexperience, but some charming things. Offenbach is a fellow who will go far if the doors of the Opera Comique are not closed against him: he has the gift of melody and the perseverance of a demon." It is rather curious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... receive the price in assignats. After that he took into his head to found a newspaper, 'La Sentinelle;' that compelled him to fly at the end of six months. His hopes, he said, were now fixed on the success of a comic opera called 'Les Peruviens.' When he said that I began to tremble. Mongenod turned author, wasting his money on a newspaper, living no doubt in the theatres, connected with singers at the Feydeau, with musicians, and all the queer ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... Baldassaro (rather Baldassare): b. 1703, in Burano, an island near Venice, and thence called Buranello; d. 1785; a distinguished composer, whose operas, about fifty in number, and mostly comic, were at one time the most popular in Italy; Galuppi is regarded as the father of the Italian comic opera. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... subjects at the same rate as good. When they murmured and threatened rebellion, he threatened in turn that he would rule them with a rod of iron, as if their actual conditions were not bad enough. Some of his oppressions were of a fantasticality bordering on comic opera: travellers had to give up their provisions at the frontier and eat the official bread of Monaco; ships entering the port were confiscated if they had brought more loaves than sufficed them for their voyage thither; no ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Marseille Conservatoire, and her talent having come to the ears of Mr. Plunkett, the director of the Palais Royal, he engaged her for the Palais Royal in Paris, where she created the part of La Chaste Suzanne, by Paul Ferrier. Giving up comic opera for comedy, Jane Hading went to the Gymnase, where she created the part of Claire de Beaulieu in "Le Maitre de Forges." London had the opportunity of seeing her in that and "Prince Zilah," by Jules Claretie, later on, and fully indorsed the Parisian verdict. These conspicuous successes ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Dana's young men. He was a star reporter, pulling down his thirty-five per; but any first-class horoscoper would have allowed that Whitlock was destined to contribute to Puck and Judge, and probably attempt the libretto of a comic opera. He legged it on the newspaper for a while and then re-deserted, the same as most of the others, and went to Springfield to resume his studies. This was his first erratic move. If he had been a true journalist there wouldn't have been anything more for him to learn. Then he published The Thirteenth ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... Epilogue to an Inland Voyage. Bob's own disguises rarely got into print, but in Will Low's Chronicle of Friendships there is a photograph of him in his student days, figuring as a sort of brigand of old-fashioned comic opera, that shows he did not from the beginning shirk the obligations he imposed upon others. I remember a huge ring, inherited from his father to whom the Czar had given it for engineering services in Russia, which ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... splendid of the world's failures, to Thackeray, one of its greatest masters of letters—who happily did not get the chance he sought in parliamentary life to fall—both English history and American history are full of illustrations to this effect. Except in the comic opera of French politics the poet, the artist, invested with power, seems to lose his efficiency in the ratio of his genius; the literary gift, instead of aiding, actually antagonizing the aptitude ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... suddenly, as he finished, she felt an insane desire to laugh. And she did laugh, loudly and unnaturally—laughed and pointed a shaking forefinger into the man's face: "You fool!" she screamed, hysterically, "you fool! I'm not afraid of you! You're not real! You can't be real! You remind me of comic opera!" ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... they were fashionable, must have felt his pulse stirred by Lyly's chant of England's greatness. For Euphues is John Lyly, and John Lyly's creed was substantially that of the well-known hero of a now forgotten comic opera, 'I am an Englishman.' ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... but Sara's dolls never wore the clothes that belonged to them; and this morning the Baby was tastefully attired in a wide red sash, with the Japanese doll's paper parasol stuck through it, like the dagger in a comic opera.) ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... trickling through little lumps of ice. What I'd like—" he stopped and shut one eye and gazed, with his head on one side, at the unimaginative MacWilliams—"what I'd like to do now," he continued, thoughtfully, "would be to sit in the front row at a comic opera, ON THE AISLE. The prima donna must be very, very beautiful, and sing most of her songs at me, and there must be three comedians, all good, and a chorus entirely composed of girls. I never could see why they have men ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... proved guilty. Smarting under a sense of shame which was entirely unmerited, every boy sought eagerly for some object on which to vent his indignation; it became necessary, to use the words of the comic opera, that "a victim should be found," and suspicion fell on Kennedy and Jacobs. The result of Diggory's trap seemed to show that the various thefts had been committed at night. It was agreed that the two occupants of the "Main-top" had special opportunity ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... referred to here is 'Unfortunate Miss Bailey,' by George Colman, and sung by Mr. Mathews in the comic opera of Love Laughs at Locksmiths. It tells the story of a maid who hung herself, while her persecutor took to ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... to the intoxication of his latest theme. He will drench himself with ecclesiology, or veterinary surgery, or railway technicalities—everything by turns and everything long; but, like the gentleman in the comic opera, he "never mixes." Of late he almost ceased to add even ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... blow, as those great characters in the hands of Garrick! but I forgot I am writing to the man himself. The devil take (as he will) these transports of enthusiasm! Apropos, the whole city of Paris is bewitched with the comic opera, and if it was not for the affair of the Jesuits, which takes up one half of our talk, the comic opera would have it all. It is a tragical nuisance in all companies as it is, and was it not for some sudden starts and dashes of Shandeism, which now and then either break the thread, or entangle ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... to Munich, after composing a comic opera in the Italian style, "La Finta Giardiniera," which had a great success, young Mozart, who had been very shabbily treated by Archbishop Hieronymus—of whose spiteful conduct we shall hear more hereafter—the successor of Sigismund, determined to resign his situation ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... to the theater that evening, the man and his sweetheart, and by chance stumbled upon a well-staged comic opera, with good music and brilliant and picturesque although occasionally scanty costumes. On the way down the son told the mother of how in Detroit, way back in the sixties, he had seen for the first time a theatrical performance. He told her what she had forgotten, how she had ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... these things would have cried out for our eyes. Nowhere in the Orient or the Islands, is the male form made so monstrous. Had some one drawn them for us, in a place where we are accustomed to look for caricature; had we seen them in comic opera, or upon the legs of a Pacific Islander; or had we come from another planet, there would have been no mistake as to the debauchery of taste they represented. Over all, was a sadness that this good man ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... manufactory of porcelain at Sevres, and also added much to the beauty of Paris. He commenced the erection of the Madeleine. Theaters and comic opera-houses were speedily built, and water was distributed over the city by ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... large-ideaed, hardworking John Hewitt hungering for "his chance" in an amateur comic opera struck Joy as so funny that she couldn't repress a small giggle and a glance across at him. John caught her look and gave her an ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... magnificent attendance and generous support, announced that on Saturday evening he would have great pleasure in presenting, providing negotiations in contemplation were perfected, for their consideration, the melodious and tuneful grand comic opera, "Pinafore," in the presentation of which the company would be reinforced by several valuable additions, who were expected to arrive early on Saturday from the ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... knows what it is, for I don't!" He paused, and looked at his companion as if seeking that intangible something. Then he jerked his head towards the drawing-room, where Marguerite could be dimly heard playing an air from the latest comic opera with a fine contempt for accidentals. "That child," he said, "knows no more about life than a sparrow. A man like myself—seventeen stone—may have to balance his books at any moment. You have a clear field; for you may take my word for it that you will be the first ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... are all very prosperous and clean comic opera gypsies, Mrs. Nesbit," said Hippy Wingate, who had come up just in time to hear ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... graver character than usually associated with comic opera is naturally afforded by Mr. HAYDYN COFFIN. Miss PHYLLIS BROUGHTON is introduced not only to sing but to dance, and performs the latter accomplishment with a grace not to be surpassed, and only to be equalled by Miss KATE VAUGHAN. Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... to Dick, who had looked forward to the story of a novel love adventure which might easily be worked into a comic opera, Bulgaria offering a suitable background. With many pretty smiles he tried to lead the lady into the real story of her past, but Mrs. Forest insisted so well that he was fain to believe that there had been no past in her life suitable to comic ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... the habit of excepting, it sounds as though they were hiccoughing. "Overruled"; "I except"; "Allowed"; "I except"; "Denied"; "I except"; "Granted"; "I except." It becomes a custom as constant as the refrain in a comic opera. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... replied, as she swept in with an air that would have done credit to the star in a comic opera. "I'd hate to crack or even crease the enamel on my face. I've been steamed and frozen, beaten ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... methods savour a little too much of comic opera. You have mistaken your country and—us. There are three of us, and if you force us to fight—well, we shall fight. The advantage of numbers is with you, I admit. For the rest, if you succeed to-night you will be in the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... big.—"The principal role (Falstaff), in VERDI's new comic Opera is amplified and enlarged," writes a special Correspondent to The Standard, "from the Falstaff of the other plays (besides the Merry Wives) in which he takes a part." "Takes a part!" Good Heavens! Falstaff ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... pestilence or the like. We came out here, pitched on the Star and Garter (they call it Somebody's pavilion), found the place a bed of lilacs and nightingales (first time I ever heard one), and also of a bird called the piasseur, cheerfulest of sylvan creatures, an ideal comic opera in itself. "Come along, what fun, here's Pan in the next glade at picnic, and this-yer's Arcadia, and it's awful fun, and I've had a glass, I will not deny, but not to see it on me," that is his meaning as near as I can gather. Well, the place (forest of beeches all new-fledged, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... courage and cleverness, to win him success and recognition. With Eldridge Gaylor it had been different. He thought of no man's pleasant looks or ways, though even upon the corrugated iron of his nature, a woman's beauty had had influence, and he had married Carmen off the comic opera stage, in the City of Mexico, where he had gone to see a great bullfight ten years ago. When he had brought her home to his famous ranch, willing for a while to be her slave and give her everything she wanted, she had found Nick a cowpuncher among other cowpunchers. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... before the Assembly as a breach of privilege. The House refused to hear witnesses on Kielly's behalf, treated the charge as proved, and demanded that he should apologize at the bar of the House. Kielly refused, adding that Kent was a liar and a coward. Then followed an interlude of comic opera. Kielly was committed, whereupon Mr Justice Lilly granted a writ of habeas corpus. This was not to be borne by the imperious Assembly, and the Speaker promptly issued his warrant for the re-arrest of Kielly, the arrest of the High Sheriff, and of Judge Lilly. Nothing like it had ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... to compare the Aristophanic Comedy to any one form of modern literature, dramatic or other. It perhaps most resembles what we now call burlesque; but it had also very much in it of broad farce and comic opera, and something also (in the hits at the fashions and follies of the day with which it abounded) of the modern pantomime. But it was something more, and more important to the Athenian public than any or all of these could have been. Almost always more or less political, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... any longer, Mariano," said the countess bitterly. "The Prime-Minister is a fool who forgets his old friendships now that he is head of the government. I who have seen him sighing around me like a comic opera tenor, making love to me (yes, I tell the truth to you) and ready to commit suicide because I scorned his vulgarity and foolishness! This afternoon, the same old story; lots of holding my hand, lots of making eyes, 'dear Concha,' 'sweet Concha' and other sugary expressions, ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... The Lady of the Manor. Here Lamb's memory, I fancy, betrayed him. This play (a comic opera by William Kenrick) was not performed at Drury Lane or Covent Garden in the period mentioned. Lamb's pen probably meant to write "The Lord of the Manor," General Burgoyne's opera, with music by William Jackson, of Exeter, which was produced in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... description whatever—asks them in turn, "What is my thought like?" Not having the faintest idea what the thought is they reply at random. One may say, "Like a dog"; another, "Like a saucepan"; a third, "Like a wet day"; a fourth, "Like a comic opera." After collecting all the answers the player announces what the thought was, and then goes along the row again calling upon the players to explain why it is like the thing named by them. The merit of the game lies in these explanations. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... in Armitage's face as he strode about preparing to leave. His eyes danced with excitement, and between the sentences that he jerked out half to himself he whistled a few bars from a comic opera that was making a record run on Broadway. His steps rang out vigorously from the bare ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... other result than making the challenged his friends for life. All this time he had been more or less "about town." In 1811 he married Elizabeth Dyke ("Bessy"), an actress of virtue and beauty, and wrote the very inferior comic opera of "The Blue Stocking." Lord Moira gave the pair a home first in his own house, then at Kegworth near Donington, whence they moved to Ashbourne. Moore was busy now. The politics of "The Two-penny ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... world at large, first as a singer in comic opera, and now as an actor and author, also lived in New Rochelle, and we came to have the honor of being numbered amongst his friends. A devoted husband and kind father, a man of letters and a book lover, such is the man as we knew ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... for reinforcements, were it not so serious, would make the motive of a comic opera. When he was in Washington, he wanted all the troops called in for the defense of the city. When he was in Virginia, he thought the troops which were left for the defense of the city ought to be sent to reinforce him,—the city was safe enough! He telegraphed to Governor Denison ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... was telling himself what a peculiar state of affairs had come upon the stage—here, with an ambush lying in wait before him, this man could step blithely along, swinging his aluminum bucket and softly warbling one of the most recent hits from a comic opera—Jack had himself heard the song on the boards of a great metropolitan theatre in New York—had even caught himself whistling the catchy air more than a few ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... drama departed widely from the limitations of its origin, there has, nevertheless, remained an association with the dance that will continue for all time. Especially is this true of the lighter branch of the drama, comedy, and the modern combination known as musical comedy or comic opera. In the popular stage entertainments of the day dancing forms an important feature of a large percentage of all productions that appear in the leading theatres. In many of the classical plays, by great dramatists, that are annually chosen for revivals, the dance ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... of the military occupation are brought home to the people perhaps most at the Gare du Nord and the Place de la Gare, where the Civic Guards, in their curious comic opera caps, are reinforced by German gendarmes with rifles slung over their shoulders. Civilians are not allowed to cross this square in front of the railway station. "Keep to the sidewalk" is the brusque ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... was an English poet and dramatist. His work as a whole has been pretty well forgotten, but he has been recently brought back to the mind of the public by the revival of his satirical Beggar's Opera, the ancestor of the modern comic opera. Gay published a collection of fables in verse in 1727, "prepared for the edification of the young Duke of Cumberland." A second group, making sixty-six in all, was published after his death. Since these fables are probably the best of their kind in English, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... who have not had a kind eye for the housemaid. There's a passage somewhere in Stevenson for which I have spent an hour's vain hunting, which exactly hits the centre. The confidential relationship, the trim appearance, not without its suggestion of comic opera and the soubrette of the Comedie Francaise, the combined air of cheerfulness and respect which is demanded, mind you, on either side the bargain—all this is acutely and vivaciously observed in half a page by a writer who never missed a romantic opening in his days. The profession, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... balcony, in the dim moonlight of the stage) now pulsating through the hushed silence of these modern rooms. Lionel Moore was not a baritone of altogether rare and exceptional gifts, otherwise he might hardly have been content with even the popularity and the substantial rewards of comic opera; but he had a very excellent voice for all that, of high range, and with a resonant and finely sympathetic timbre that seemed easily to find its way (according to all accounts) to the feminine heart. And the music of this serenade was ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... was. And perhaps he did not care that it should be known that he had some means, whatever they might have been—sufficient, at any rate, to enable him to lend money to people. These two had a duet down there, like conspirators in a comic opera, of "Sh—ssh, shssh! Secrecy! Secrecy!" It must have been funny, because they were very ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... we shall perform here a comic opera, "The Barber of Baghdad," founded on a tale from the "Arabian Nights," words and music by Cornelius. The music is full of wit and humour, and moves with remarkable self-possession in the aristrocratic region of art. I expect a very good result. "Rienzi" will be taken in hand ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... meanwhile, and the cornets were shrieking long-sustained, ear-splitting blasts like the bellowing of calves in a slaughter-house. In the midst of the throng of cruel guards marched some tall, well-built girls, with painted cheeks, and in costumes copied from the Turkish maidens of comic opera. They carried water jugs to show they were the Biblical women from Samaria. From their mothers they had borrowed earrings and breast-pins. Their plump legs were ostentatiously exposed in open-work stockings under short Polish peasant skirts. But this was not the occasion for ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Josephine Sabel's father and mother saw her on the stage she was in the chorus of a comic opera company and was wearing tights. Mother ran out of the theater and Father tried to climb up over the footlights to get at Josephine ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... the crowning joke is the Comic Opera you've written for us—"King Tuppence, or A Good Deal Less than Half a Sover- eign"—in which the celebrated English tenor, Mr. Wilkinson, burlesques your personal appearance and gives grotesque imitations of your ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... a comic opera founded on the history of Joseph was produced in England the people ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... "There may be a comic opera, as you call it. War is not so impossible as to be laughed at. The dove may fly away and ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... sausage and bread sauce, to say nothing of the sweets and the ice which followed. But even what Captain Knowlton described as luncheon, and what I regarded as a kind of king of dinners, was eclipsed by what came afterwards, for we were driven to a theatre, where a comic opera was being played; and at seven o'clock that evening a very tired and sleepy boy, with his right hand tightly clenched on a half-sovereign in his jacket pocket, was deposited on the steps of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... respectively the burglar and the householder, of whom the latter staked his property and the former a certain period of personal liberty; and the rules of the game were equally binding on both. It was a conception worthy of comic opera; and yet, incredible as it may seem, it is the very view of crime that is today accepted ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... intently fixed upon the detective's face, as though seeking inspiration for speech from that source. The other man, Backlos, was a tall, hawk-featured man with a sweeping black moustache, who needed only gaudy habiliments to make him the ideal pirate king of the comic opera stage. It was he ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... the table paid no heed to those sounds; they had had them in their ears too long. And five of the six were occupied in wondering what in the world Sir Charles Luffe, K.C.S.I., could have learnt of value to him at a solitary supper party with a lady of comic opera. For it was evident that he had spoken in ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... fantastic, pagoda-like building of three stories; and furnished with many mirrors, carved oak sideboards, and lamp-shades of colored glass. Mango Bell, King of the Cameroons, sounds like a character in a comic opera, but the king was an extremely serious, tall, handsome, and self-respecting negro. Having been educated in England, he spoke much more correct English than any of us. Of the few "Kings I Have Met," both ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... attention, a plot which is even moderately complicated cannot be developed with due clearness. Hence in the Italian opera buffa, the action is altogether neglected; and along with its grotesque caricatures, it is distinguished for uniform situations, which admit not of dramatic progress. But the comic opera of the French, although from the space occupied by the music it is unsusceptible of any very perfect dramatic development, is still calculated to produce a considerable stage effect, and speaks pleasingly to the imagination. The poets have not here been prevented by the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... some of the boys, but if he did not it was simply because there was too much excitement going on. That evening we were the guests of Col. McCaull at Palmer's Theater, where De-Wolf Hopper, Digby Bell and other prominent comic opera stars were playing in "The May Queen." The boxes that we occupied that night were handsomely decorated with flags and bunting, while from the proscenium arch hung an emblem of all nations, a gilt eagle ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... "Comic opera," he continued, "is drama interrupted by song and dance. Grand opera is the simultaneous presentation of most, perhaps all, of the six arts. There is no reason in nature against any conceivable combination; it is for the creative artist to direct ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... consider Jack judicially as a human exhibit, stripped of all the chimera of romance with which Little Rivers had clothed his personality. If he had not happened to meet her on the pass, the townspeople would have regarded this stranger as an invasion of real life by a character out of a comic opera. She viewed the specimen under a magnifying glass in all angles, turning it around as if it were a bronze or an ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... light of her personality I thought Barbara's coup de theatre rather cruel. . . . Of course Barbara received her courteously. She, too, was surprised at her outward aspect, having expected to behold a fantastic personage of comic opera. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... him out of a sound sleep so that he might see. It was ten-thirty A.M. so that his peevishness was unwarranted. They had seen the play the night before and Hahn had decided that, translated and with interpolations (it was a comic opera), it would captivate New York. Then and there he completed the negotiations which Wallie had begun. Hahn was all for taking the first train out, but Wallie was firm. "You've got to see her, I tell you. You've got ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... capital punishments and one life-imprisonment were awarded; whereas, for the murder of five natives (including a woman) by Germans, the total punishment was six and a quarter years of prison. In 1906 the amazing German Colonial Empire cost 180 millions of marks. A high price to pay for a comic opera, even with real waterfalls! M. Tonnelat has combined sobriety and exactitude with an ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... for a moment and then he continued: "If you will stay for the last act you will find in your room a little supper, a bottle of wine, and a box of cigars, which you may consume while you are waiting." In sooth when Campanari entered his dressing room after the first act of Wagner's comic opera he found that his director had kept his word.... The baritone ate the supper, drank the wine, put the cigars in his pocket ... and ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... experience in Jeypore seemed even more like a scene from a comic opera,—only the curtain is never lowered in this most spectacular city in India, if not in ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of Rose Cheri which comes back to me, through the distance of time, as the prettiest piece of pure and gentle stage-pathos in my memory; at the Porte St. Martin "Lucretia Borgia" by Hugo; at the Cirque, scenes of the great revolution, and all the battles of Napoleon; at the Comic Opera, "Gibby"; and at the Palais Royal the usual new-year's piece, in which Alexandre Dumas was shown in his study beside a pile of quarto volumes five feet high, which proved to be the first tableau of the first act of the first piece ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... you this story in his own words, or any idea of his extraordinary, joyous naturalness, and his air of preposterous good faith—as if he had done the only thing conceivable in the case. It was as convincing as a scene in comic opera. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... arrival I found, keeping order on the way outside the station, the drollest policeman that ever stepped out of a comic opera. At home we should have had to protect him against the boys; here ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... poverty-stricken their lives had been and that they were not only enjoying the music for itself, but because it was characteristic of all that they had left behind them. It was pathetic to hear them boast of having read of a certain song in such a paper, and of the fact that they knew the plot of a late comic opera and the names of those who had played in it, and that it had or had not been acceptable to the ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... aristocratic bruiser and bravo. His constancy to Dot Parris was really touching. With a dog-like faithfulness and docility, this otherwise most turbulent of his sex had followed the object of his affections from music-hall to comic opera, from comic opera to the high places of legitimate drama. And Dot meanwhile remained serenely invulnerable, tricking and mocking her high-born heavy-weight lover, telling him cheerfully she really had no use for ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... some man generally from the smaller provincial cities, who has artistic or theatrical aspirations and a pocketful of money. It is the Jackal's mission to turn this jay into an "angel." Has the gentleman from Lockport come with the score of a comic opera under his arm, and two thousand dollars in his pocket? Two thousand dollars will not go far toward the production of a comic opera in these days, and the jay finds that out later; but not until after the Jackal has made him intimately acquainted with a very gentlemanly and ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... one more card for him to play. All his operas, so far, had been tragedies. What if he were to write a comic opera? Would not that be likely to get him access to the stage again, and help him financially? He had the plan for a comic opera; indeed, he had sketched it as early as 1845, at the same time as the plot of "Lohengrin." Sixteen years it lay dormant in his brain. At ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... see," explained Dan, "there is a comic opera playing here. This afternoon, Swipes, Shorts and Spuddy took some of the chorus girls to the house, when the other fellows were away. They might have known the officers would have found it out. Sure enough, they did! The little rascals were all drunk on champagne, and the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... almost caused a European war. Now it ended in what has a resemblance to a comic opera. Vancouver found the Spaniards occupying a fort on an island at the mouth of the harbour. On the main shore stood the Indian village of Chief Maquinna. A Spanish pilot guided the English ship to mooring. The Spanish frigates ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... face and head-dress, suggestive of the free, roving life of the plains, rose above a gown which was only suited to comic opera. Clearly, Pocahontas had made a mistake ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... 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 the church ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... and the habit of dealing with a good dressmaker. At the head of the stairs she gave a little cry of surprise, for Paul Deulin was coming along the broad corridor towards her, swinging the key of his bedroom and nonchalantly humming an air from a recent comic opera. He was, it appeared, as much at home here as in London or ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... meetings, to which patriotic deputations, volunteers and amateurs come in turn to declaim and sing; where the president, Lubin, "decorated with his scarf," shouts the Marseilles Hymn five or six times, "Ca Ira," and other songs of several stanzas, set to tunes of the Comic Opera, and always "out of time, displaying the voice, airs and songs of an exquisite Leander.. . I really believe that, at the last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour at different times, the assembly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... This comic opera phase came to a head in the famous Drawbaugh case, which lasted for nearly four years, and filled ten thousand pages with its evidence. Having failed on Reis, the German, the opponents of Bell now brought forward an American inventor named Daniel Drawbaugh, and opened up a noisy newspaper ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... popular and by far the best of M. Offenbach's works, there is no need to dwell on his indebtedness to MM. Meilhac and Halevy, or to point out how important a thing the quality of the opera-book is to the composer of the score. These earlier librettos were admirably made: they are models of what a comic opera-book should be. I cannot well imagine a better bit of work of its kind than the Belle Helene or the Grande Duchesse. Tried by the triple test of plot, characters and dialogue, they are nowhere wanting. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... righteous, sensitive, local consciousness, wholly escaped from the maltster's taint, in itself horrible and shocking; nor did his patronage of budding genius in the prize ring, or his adventures (often noisily heralded) as a financial pillar of comic opera, tend to change or hide the leopard's spots in a community where the Ten Commandments haven't yet been declared unconstitutional, save by plumbers and paperhangers. Women who had never in their lives seen Mrs. Thatcher ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... real treasure in German music has been disinterred from the fragments of the past, thus long after its composer's death. It is a striking illustration of the universality of Weber's genius that aught like this should prove to have been written by him, for his manuscript is a fragment {265} of a comic opera of the best kind. Although only seven parts were completed by the composer himself, Mahler took the remaining ten mostly from Weber's other manuscripts. He completed them himself so adroitly, that the best musicians cannot distinguish Weber from Mahler. We owe a debt of gratitude to ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... houses were springing up, quaintly gabled, much verandahed, pointed, fantastic, brilliant. They made the whole neighbourhood of the Heath look like the Merrie England of a comic opera. Yet they were pretty in their way; many were designed by able architects, and pleased with a balanced sense of proportion and an impression of beauty and fitness. Many, of course, lacked this, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... my own case, from which he selected a cigar with anxious care and much sniffing; then he bade me a ceremonious adieu and departed down the stairs, blithely humming a melody from the latest comic opera. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... so many things that are at first merely disagreeable are allowed to make so great a noise and to continue for so long a time that they become almost unbearable. It is a question that often confronts one at a comic opera, always in the near neighbourhood of a gramophone, but never with such persistent irritation as when undergoing a bombardment from high explosive shell. Nothing is more trying to the nerves, for and from it there is no escape. This war has been defined as a war, not of infantry, nor ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... half-tone engraving, which was the first glimpse I had of him, and the dawn of his subsequent triumphs. For four years he supplied the evening edition and The Sunday World with a comic feature, to say nothing of a comic opera, written to order in five days. The absence of a guillotine in New York State accounts for his escape for this latter offence. Nevertheless, in all else his standard of excellence ascended. He reported the Thaw trial in long-hand, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... comic opera company through the wheat-belt—one way; he had led a burlesque troupe into Arizona and had traded it ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... have prepared a banquet under la feuillee, grant or refuse the wishes of the mortal folk in the traditional manner of enchantresses amiable or perverse. The Jeu de Robin et Marlon—first performed at Naples in 1283—is a pastoral comic opera, with music, song, and dance; the good Marion is loyal to her rustic lover, and puts his rival, her cavalier admirer, to shame. These were happy inventions happily executed; but they stand alone. It is not until we reach the fifteenth century that mediaeval comedy, in various forms, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... some natural qualifications and much industry, has for many years been the most useful actor on our boards. His grave old gentlemen are far above mediocrity, and although nearly sixty years of age, he appears to much advantage occasionally in comic opera; being the only man in the company, with the exception of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... pretty sunlight that finds its way into the gardens of Plessy? I knew I was going to walk with Doris by a sea blue as any drop-curtain, and for a moment Doris seemed to be but a figure on a drop-curtain. Am I very cynical? But are we not all figures on drop-curtains, and is not everything comic opera, and "La Belle Helene" perhaps the only true reality? Amused by the idea of Jason or Paris or Menelaus in Plessy, I asked Doris what music was played by the local orchestra, and she told me it played "The March of Aida" every evening. "Oh, the cornet," I said, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... a black velvet suit with yellow facings, and a tall straw hat running to a point. I seemed to have seen him a hundred times in comic opera. ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... strange one—as strange as if taken from a comic opera. The fishing-sloop rocking on the long swell, the dog cowed and uncertain, one deaf man doubtingly flashing the lantern in the face of Bart Hodge, and the other swaying unsteadily on his feet, as if he contemplated making a blind rush at Merriwell. In ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... compulsion, whereupon hands were laid upon shoulders and coat collars, and, accepting this as the application of force, they were transferred to the San Jacinto's boats. The scene on the Trent, as described by all parties, both then and later, partakes of the nature of comic opera, yet was serious enough to the participants. In fact, the envoys, especially Slidell, were exultant in the conviction that the action of Wilkes would inevitably result in the early realization ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... bravery of the Spanish women, which at this distance seems somewhat tinged with the air of comic opera, is connected with the heroic defence of Orihuela. It was at the time of the Moorish invasion, when the Gothic leaders, after their pitiful failure at Guadalete, were seeking cover and scurrying off to places of safety, closely pursued by the ardent sons of the Prophet. Duke ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... "You've seen a comic opera cheese factory," said I, when we had left the church. "Now, I'll show you the real thing, and then you shall have lunch. It won't be conventional, but I think ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... to see Jannina after its capture. Nora concealed from her friend the fact that the editor of the Daylight particularly wished her to see a battle so that she might write an article on actual warfare from a woman's point of view. With her name as a queen of comic opera, such an article from her pen would be a ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... letter that had been lying in her lap and ran over its contents again. It was a letter from the manager of a comic opera offering her a place with a large traveling company of the season. The salary was a very large figure, and the prospect held out by the manager was flattering. He had heard Rachel sing that Sunday morning when the stranger had interrupted ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... the sea. We have a little navy, commanded chiefly by political pets who couldn't sail a catboat into New York harbor without getting aground or falling overboard. We have an army, about the size of a comic opera company, officered largely by society swells who cannot even play good poker, are powerful only on dress parade. We have a few militia companies, scattered from Sunrise to Lake Chance, composed chiefly of boys ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and gold, marched out to the fire. The British soldiers lined up when they saw them coming, and gave them three rousing cheers, while one of the Tommies solemnly swept the road before them with a broom. As my chauffeur "Rad" said, "It was just like a scene from a blinking comic opera." ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Mrs. Berry, "it's a comic opera, and a very good one. I've seen it, and I'm sure you girls will enjoy it. I'll order seats for that. Be sure to be home for luncheon promptly at one, so you can get ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... almost an impossibility. At Paris, Vienna, Pesth, how different! You raise your little finger, and the deed is done. Superfluous people—like myself—are removed like the hairs from your chin. But here intrigue seems indeed to exist only within the pages of a shilling novel, or in a comic opera. The gentleman with a helmet there, who regards us so benignly, will presently earn a shilling by calling me a hansom. Yet in effect he does me a far greater service. He stands for a multitude of cold Anglo-Saxon laws, adamant, incorruptible, inflexible—as ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... so early in the day that the two young men sallied forth in quest of light adventure. Besides, Merrihew was very eager to find some Roman and Florence newspapers. The American Comic Opera Company was somewhere north. They found stationed outside the hotel a rosy-cheeked cabby who answered to the name of Tomasso, or Tomass', as the Neapolitans generally drop the finals. He carried a bright red lap-robe and blanket, spoke a little English, and was very proud of the accomplishment. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... tortured with an interest which the power awakening it is not adequate to gratify. Is it generous, is it just in a novelist, to lift us up to a pitch of tragic frenzy, and then drop us down into the last scene of a comic opera? We refuse to be comforted by the fact that the novelist does not, perhaps, consciously mock ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... is another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera, walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their arms, on the way to the maestro's; slender, light-haired English misses, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned, buxom Russian parishnas who greet their acquaintances with the sweeping bow of a dramatic soprano; Spanish senoritas of bold faces and free manners, preparing for stage careers as Bizet's cigarette-girl—frivolous, sonorous song-birds ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... side of the divide, a hat appeared over the bend of the other side. She could not mistake the high peak of that comic opera sombrero. Ashton was almost back to the ranch. Her first thought was that he had gone part way, and given up the trip. The big sombrero bobbed up and down in an odd manner. She guessed the cause even ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... and eighty thousand dollars for Hank's gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't doing him any good. He was making a monkey of himself with it, Henry was. A good bit of that hundred and eighty went into a comic opera company that was one of the worst I ever did see. Henry had no judgment. He was too easy. Well, along this summer he was on the point of making a break that would—well, I says to him, says I, 'Hank, I'm no penny-squeezer; I like ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson |
