"Operatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "such a getting up (and down) stairs," walking with crab-like action, require a lot of rehearsal, not to mention the management of a sword which is apt to be dangerous only to the wearer, and the carrying of wax-lights, the effect of which on his official Court dress may recall to the mind of the Operatic Manager the celebrated name of GRISI. There was no one in authority to tell me anything about Mireille, and this is what I made out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... often now through sermon trite And operatic singer's flight, I long for that old friendly sight, The hand with herbs of value light, To help to pass ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... heroic play. When Davenant before the Restoration obtained Cromwell's permission to reintroduce dramatic entertainments, if not plays, music necessarily formed the chief part of the performance. It was in fact an opera, and operatic peculiarities remained after all restriction had been taken off. Scott assigns on the whole far too much influence to the French drama and to the personal predilection of Charles. The subject is a large one, and has never been ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... appearance anywhere since the afternoon in Novelli's studio when he had shown his opera to La Chaise and Paula. It had been agreed among them that with certain important changes, it would make an admirable vehicle for Paula's return to the operatic stage, and being a small affair from the producer's point of view, involving only one interior set, would be practicable for production during the summer at Ravinia in case the project for Paula's singing there went through. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... know,' he said with emphasis. 'I assure you that I know. I have seen a great deal of operatic people. A few, and they are not generally the great ones, try to lead their own lives, as you put it, but they either don't succeed at all or else they make themselves so disagreeable to their fellow artists that life ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... much embarrassed by this painful outbreak. It was only three weeks ago that M. Bartin had dedicated a new quadrille to her; and but a fortnight since Signor Mancussi had sung four operatic airs gratuitously at one of her musical and dramatic soirees. But respect for herself and for her guests—especially for Mr. Overtop, of whose talents she had formed an exalted opinion—pointed out her path of duty, and she followed it. She stepped between the two disputants, and cast ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... possibilities of his income. It was weary, hard, nerve-racking employment. About the muddle of June they closed Viviani. Susy Clemens went to Paris to cultivate her voice, a rare soprano, with a view to preparing for the operatic stage. Clemens took Mrs. Clemens, with little Jean, to Germany for the baths. Clara, who had graduated from Mrs. Willard's school in Berlin, joined them in Munich, and somewhat later Susy also joined them, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in dress coats and white neck-cloths. In front of the altar a platform three feet high covered with Brussels carpet had been erected. Pending the arrival of the wedding cortege, Mr. Morgan performed a number of operatic selections ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... such an institution as the English Dramatic College, where decayed artists can retire when their day of glory is past and they have become poor and lonely. Each city has one theatre, the largest and most magnificent, reserved exclusively for operatic performances, and where the unmusical drama is scarcely ever tolerated. I once saw Ristori act in Metastasio's Dido at the Scala for the benefit of the wounded during the war for Italian independence; but this was the only occasion in fifty years on which an actress had declaimed in that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... perhaps the meanest and most pusillanimous which has ever been recorded. The poor wretch who, without a pang, had caused so many brave Romans and so many innocent Christians to be murdered could not summon up resolution to die. He devised every operatic incident of which he could think. When even his most degraded slaves urged him to have sufficient manliness to save himself from the fearful infamies which otherwise awaited him, he ordered his grave to be dug, and fragments of marble to be collected for its adornment, and water and wood for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... struck, and people began to come in; there was likely to be a rush to-night, and the players in the front room commenced their liveliest round of operatic airs. One after another turned into the side room, and the calls for service grew lively. Jane moved among them mechanically, thinking all the while of Nobby tossing in his pain; of the tree waiting for to-morrow; of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a natural love for poetry and music. Indeed it is a French Canadian by birth and early education—Madame Albani—who {451} not long ago won a high distinction on the operatic stage. No writer of this nationality, however, has yet produced an opera or a drama which has won fame for its author. The priesthood, indeed, has been a persistent enemy of the theatre, which consequently has never attained a successful foothold ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... to his public, each figure would be recognized with a burst of delighted applause. The great Sarah was represented in poses of infinite humor, surrounded by her menagerie or receiving the homage of the universe. Political leaders, foreign sovereigns, social and operatic stars, were made to pass before a laughing public. None were spared. Paris went mad with delight at this new “art,” and for months it was impossible to find a seat vacant ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... will bring the most callous into a devotional mood long before the end of the service. Rendered as it invariably is by male voices, with superb basses in place of the non-existent organ, it spoils one's taste forever for the elaborate, operatic church music of the West performed by choirs which are usually engaged in vocal steeplechases with the organ for the enhancement of the evil effects. My meditations were interrupted by the approach of a young man, who asked me to be his godmother! ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... present generation. Young people or old people do not read his fables any more—those fables which Rousseau thought worthy of special discussion in his great treatise on Education. The gallant Captain Macheath swaggers and sings across the operatic stage no more, nor are tears shed now for pretty Polly Peachum's troubles. Yet every day some one quotes from Gay, and does not know ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... operatic stage would be too dangerous, if they had the wit or the humor always to amuse you as much as they do the first time you are thrown on their company. However little jargon, habits, and decency they have on the surface, it is possible that ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... between three and four o'clock, and that in spite of the insufferable heat of the day the two invalids (so very differently disabled) were driven to the Central Park, were driven around it, heard Dodworth's Band perform half a dozen operatic selections as only that cornet-band can perform them, saw the loungers on the grass, the promenaders on the walks, the boats on the pond which is called a lake, and all the picturesque features of that Saturday-afternoon gathering which within ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the case that the operatic tenor has been pronounced on good authority to be not a man but a disease?—The authority was a German conductor, who was presumably speaking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... so monstrously diverting to Addison, was like that in Hamburg in the latter part of the seventeenth, and in New York at the end of the nineteenth. There were three years in London when Italian and English were mixed in the operatic representations. ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... would furnish splendid material for the pen of a novelist. But such a journey from the Saxon capital to Warsaw, which took about eight days, and cost on an average from 3,000 to 3,500 thalers (450 to 525 pounds), was a mere nothing compared with the migration of a Parisian operatic company in May, 1700. The ninety-three members of which it was composed set out in carriages and drove by Strasburg to Ulm, there they embarked and sailed to Cracow, whence the journey was continued on rafts. [FOOTNOTE: M. Furstenau, Zur Geschichte der Music und des Theaters am Hofe zu Dresden.] ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... back a little and looked in something like astonishment at him; but Zaidie was already in touch with them, and half by song and half by signs she very soon gave them an idea of what they were and where they had come from. Her husband afterwards told her that it was the best piece of operatic acting he had ever seen, and, considering all the circumstances, this ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... these oddly assorted boon companions was the doctor's laboratory, which was divided from the house by a moderately large garden. Here on a Sunday evening one might meet the very "latest" composer, the sculptor bringing a new "message," or the man destined to supplant with the ballet the time-worn operatic tradition. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... otherwise the European and the New York production were much the same. At the Metropolitan Opera House, in New York, there were three hundred people upon the stage in the first act, and every attention was given to scenic detail. This piece is meant for the concert room, and in no sense for the operatic stage, but great care and much money have been spent in trying to realize its scenic demands. As a dramatic production, it cannot compare with the "Faust" of Gounod, but it has certain qualities of a ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... I find it difficult to share these emotions. I seem to smell the foot-lights of the opera in these heroic declamations, and indeed poor Napoleon the Little was himself so much of an operatic hero that to exalt him into a classic tyrant seems ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... view the scene, Military Mass begins. The congregation is very small, consisting almost exclusively of women, who seem to do penance for both sexes in Cuba. The military band, which leads the column of infantry, marches, playing an operatic air, while turning one side for the soldiery to pass on towards the altar. The time-keeping steps of the men upon the marble floor mingle with drum, fife, and organ. Over all, one catches now and then the subdued voice ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Naples, Graham heard little of Selby except as a literary recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage. But he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil had shown to her, when left by Selby's death alone in the world; of the interest which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one so eminent as the great ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... itself calls up visions of the greatest operatic tenor of the present generation, to those who have both heard and seen him in some of his many roles. Or, to those who have only listened to his records, again visions of the wonderful voice, with its penetrating, vibrant, ringing quality, the impassioned delivery, which stamps every ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... the footbridge and were in the act of crossing it, when they became aware that the stream beneath them differed from all streams in their experience. It was not rippling like other streams; it was not murmuring; it was tinkling out a gay little operatic tune! ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... critique in the 'Edinburgh Review' Sent to Mr. Harness Success of the satire The author's regret in having written it Refusal to republish it Attempted publication of Englishman, Otway's three requisites for an Envy Ephesus, ruins of EPIGRAM on Moore's Operatic Farce, or Farcical Opera Erskine, Lord, his eloquence his famous pamphlet See, also Essex (George-Capel), fifth Earl of Euxine, or Black Sea, description of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and President Wilson's Administration. Largely under banking auspices the greatest selling campaign on record was inaugurated. Bonds were placed on sale at street corners, in theaters, and restaurants; disposed of by eminent operatic stars, moving-picture favorites, and wounded heroes from the front. Steeple jacks attracted crowds by their perilous antics, in order to start the bidding for subscriptions. Villages and isolated farmhouses were canvassed. The ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... her merits, the audience will not get away till the following morning. Juliette must have said, on the above-mentioned occasion, "Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I could say 'good-night' until to-morrow." And the usual chorus of operatic habitues will be, "We won't go home till morning. Till daylight doth appear!" with refrain, "For—she (or he)'s a jolly good singer," &c., ad infinitum, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... "side-scene" in a comic opera. But there was a serious little English lawn in front of it, over which a couple of industrious red-coats were pulling up and down a garden-roller; and in the centre of the drive before the door was a tremendous clump of rhododendrons of more than operatic brilliancy. I leaned on the garden-gate and looked out at the camp: it was twinkling and bustling in the morning light, which drizzled down upon it in patches from a somewhat agitated sky. An hour later the camp got itself together and spread itself, in close battalions and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... sound oratory, but of hoboes blinking in rows, and girls in gospel bonnets, and little silver and crimson placards of Bible texts. They stopped on a corner to listen to a Pentecostal brother, to an I. W. W. speaker, to a magnificent negro who boomed in an operatic baritone that the Day of Judgment was coming on April 11, 1923, at ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... if not quite, as bad. The undisguised sensuality of Faust, both in Goethe's drama and in the operatic rendering, is such that it nearly destroys our sympathy with Margaret, and scenes that should be pathetic are either merely repulsive, or excite our indignation to such a degree that we 'turn all our tears to sparks ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... filled with the Spirit is that those who are thus filled will speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in their hearts to the Lord. Men who are filled with the Holy Spirit will not be singing sentimental ballads, not comic ditties, nor operatic airs while the power of the Holy Ghost is upon them. If the Holy Ghost should come upon any one while listening to one of the most innocent of the world's songs, he would not enjoy it, he would long to hear something about ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... ligation of the common carotid on the same side. Green practiced rapid removal of the tumor and ligated the bleeding vessels later. Rose tied each vessel before cutting, proceeding slowly. Senn remarks that in 1878 he witnessed one of Rose's operations which lasted for four hours. Although the operatic technic of removal of the thyroid gland for tumor has been greatly perfected by Billroth, Lucke, Julliard, Reverdin, Socin, Kocher, and others, the current opinion at the present day seems to be that complete extirpation of the thyroid gland, except for malignant disease, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... always this queer anomaly of the chorus. We have in our modern theatre no chorus, and when, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the ballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the intervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and pottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble to join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the choral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them alone commands ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... it otherwise. I found myself surrounded by pressmen and picture people. Of course, he disclaimed responsibility as usual, but I could read his guilt in his eyes. He persists in 'booming' me as though I were an operatic nightingale with a poor voice or a variety comedian who ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer. Not to put too fine a point on it, I mean that these girls' gyrations in the centre of their gyrating and centrifugal hoops make a most operatic drapery-display. I saw scores and scores of public waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who understood the art, or, at any rate, who practised the art, of avoiding an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... that apparition, the bride halted; so suddenly indeed, that she had not time to put down both feet, but remained with one high in the air, while the other sustained itself on the light fantastic toe. The company naturally imagined this to be an operatic flourish, which called for approbation. Monsieur Love, who was thundering down behind her, cried, "Bravo!" and as the well-grown gentleman had to make a sweep to avoid disturbing her equilibrium, he came full against ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... some mistake," faltered Joan, unconsciously answering in English. "People who do not know Monsieur Poluski often take him for an operatic artiste. He is a painter. He sings only to amuse himself, and seldom waits to consider whether the time ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... a weary superiority, tilting his chair far back near an open window in the true Costaguana manner. The military band happened to be braying operatic selections on the plaza just then, and twice he raised his hand imperatively for silence in order to listen to a ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... brought him out in opera as a buffo. When he had roared his voice away, he went into the chorus. My father was reared in Italy, and looked more Italian than most genuine natives. He had no voice; so he became first accompanist, then chorus master, and finally trainer for the operatic stage. He speculated in an American tour; married out there; lost all his money; and came over to England, when I was only twelve, to resume his business at Covent Garden. I stayed in America, and was apprenticed to an electrical ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... most successful operatic managers—impressario, I believe, is the more correct appellation—was about to produce the opera of "Salome," which had been taken off the rival stage after its first performance, on the assumption ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... course he prescribes is unified. There should be no waste material. Some teachers are inclined to teach pieces of a worthless order to gain the fickle interest of some pupils. They feel that it is better to teach an operatic arrangement, no matter how superficial, and retain the interest of the pupil, than to insist upon what they know is really best for the pupil, and run the risk of having the pupil go to another teacher less conscientious about making compromises of this sort. When the teacher has come ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... side," he said, "I cannot read it; the notes of the Miserere are still sounding in my heart, and this operatic air would but create a discord. We will proceed ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... orderly appearance would compare favorably with that in the better parts of many American cities. We were asked on our first Sunday at the dinner-table if we would like to have seats secured for us at the opera that evening. Operatic performances and concerts are among the better entertainments offered on Sunday evenings. The laws are strict, however, regarding quiet in the streets and the closing of places of business until after Sunday morning service in the churches. In the finest residence portions of some ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... greater than Mozart because Salieri's melodies were more like Hasse's in form. Perhaps the last act might be quite as exquisite on the stage, for it is even more exquisite in the score; but that we shall not know until our operatic singers abandon their vanity and their melodrama, and by reading an occasional book, and sometimes going out into the world, learn how much they themselves would gain if they ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Walt Whitman: "A reformer—but not founder." This holds good of Wagner, who closed a period and did not begin a new one. In a word, Wagner was a theater musician, one cursed by a craze for public applause—and shekels—and knowing his public, gave them more operatic music than any Italian who ever wrote for barrel-organ fame. Wagner became popular, the rage; and today his music, grown stale in Germany, is being fervently imitated, nay, burlesqued, by the neo-Italian school. Come, is it not a comical situation, this swapping of themes among ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... breaks into a melody from the top of a wild cherry, and then it is as if a famous operatic coloratura soprano had joined the village choir. For power and continuity of song he is without a peer. With head erect and long tail pendant he pours forth such a flood of melody, so varied and so sweet that we forget the exquisite hymn-like notes of the wood-thrush and yield ourselves ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Siegfried was born, and when he kisses her he seems to be quite a man! By the way, Brunhilde was put to sleep for interfering somehow or other in the love affairs of Siegfried's mother and father, who are really sister and brother. If you think of it, the story is extremely indecent, but operatic things never seem to be shocking; music, apparently, covers a multitude of naughtiness, like charity is reported to do. Very likely that's why Mrs. —— is always doing so much for institutions and what not—for her sins, I suppose. I always thought ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... stood inanimate between stamping feet and clapping hands. No; he would never have connected this magnificent woman with the simple bush girl in the unpretentious frocks that he recalled as clearly as her former self. He had looked for less finery, less physical development, less, indeed, of the grand operatic tout-ensemble. But acting ended with her smile, and much of the old innocent simplicity came back as the lips parted in song. And her song had not been spoilt by riches and adulation; her song had not sacrificed sweetness to artifice; there was ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... her as a moral monster, in which form she still treads the operatic stage, and this is the conception which mankind in general have of her. The lover of real poetry regards this romanticist's terrible drama of Lucretia Borgia as a grotesque manifestation of the art, while ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... The opera of Thomas had rendered the public familiar with the personage of the hero, and the magnates of the Grand Opera came to the Salle Ventadour to study this new and forcible presentment of the baritone prince, who wails and warbles through the operatic travesty of Shakespeare's masterpiece. That the impersonation will prove wholly acceptable to all Shakespearian critics in England or America is extremely doubtful. For the Hamlet of Rossi is mad—undeniably, unmistakably mad—from the moment of his interview with the Ghost. But once ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... meeting. But I truly take an interest In the grave young Signor Werner. Greatly has improved the singing Of my choir, since he leads it, And the taste for solemn music; While my own Italian singers Care too much for operatic Tunes of lighter character. Quietly he does his duty, Of his own accord ne'er speaking; Never begs of me a favour; Never was his hand extended To receive the gifts of bribery. Yet examples of corruption Are more frequent with us, surely, Than the fleas in sultry summer. ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... come in to reap an annual harvest here too, and have and long will have their zealous party of admirers. Were Opera an organized home industry among us, as much as other forms of music,—were there some meaning in the name "Academy of Music" worn by operatic theatres, it would be more useful to our artistic progress. But Italian Opera, as managed, and "star" concerts generally, are no part of the healthy, permanent development of our own musical resources. They are speculations; they attack us from without, exploiting a factitious enthusiasm, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... a violinist respectable, even in a corps which included Reicha, Romberg, Ries. He had been reared in the severe Saxon school of the Bachs, and before coming to Bonn had had much experience as music director of an operatic company. He knew the value of the maxim, Festina lente, and was wise enough to understand, that no lofty and enduring structure can be reared, unless the foundations are broad and deep,—that sound and exhaustive study of canon, fugue, and counterpoint is as necessary to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... appear; and the effect of this administration and restraint is to be seen in Berlin even to this day. The public gardens are full of charming little resorts, where, every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one can have either a concert of good music, or a very fair dramatic or operatic performance. Here whole families may be seen enjoying together a wholesome and refreshing entertainment,—the mother and aunts with their knitting, the baby, the children of all ages, and the father,—their faces radiant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... peculiar interest for the public which did not translate itself to me. As far as the more visible commerce of the more sight-seen parts of the Thames is concerned, it is as unimpressive as may be. It has nothing of the dramatic presence of the shipping in the Hudson or the East River, with its light operatic touches in the gayly painted Sound and North River steamboats. You must go as far at least as Stepney on the Thames before you begin to realize that London is the largest port, as well as the largest ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... abetted by a foreigner. It is committed by an Italian statesman, a member of the Italian Parliament in collusion with this foreigner to debase, to enslave, to dishonor Italy.".... Traditore! I never thought to hear the word off the operatic stage. From D'Annunzio's lips it fell like a wave of fire upon that inflammable audience. A grizzled, well-dressed citizen suddenly leaped to his feet, yelling,—"I will drink his blood, ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... man, the good husband, the tender father; he slips into the conjugal bed, his imagination still afire with the illusive forms of the operatic nymphs, and so turns to the profit of conjugal love the world's depravities, the voluptuous curves of Taglioni's leg. And finally, if he sleeps, he sleeps apace, and hurries through his slumber as he ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... each other, both embarrassed by the long silence, the military band began to play under the trees in the garden. They played one of those Italian operatic overtures which seem to have been written expressly for public open-air resorts; the swiftly-flowing notes, as they rise into the air, blend with the call of the swallows and the silvery plash of the fountain. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... the preludes of Bach on the clavichord. Her infantile graces at these instruments were the delight and amazement of her parents. She warbled this old-time music as other children do the vulgar songs of the hour; she seemed less anxious to learn the operatic music which she heard in her mother's class-rooms, and there was a shade of uneasiness in Mrs. Innes's admiration of the beauty of Evelyn's taste; but Mr. Innes said that it was better that her first love should ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... was under consideration. Marcia was a proficient upon the harp and piano, and, as she had heard that Mr. Greenleaf, the handsome painter, as she called him, was a fine singer, she determined to practise some operatic duets with him, that should move all her musical friends ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... he continued, as he drew 13, "all ye've got ter do is this—313." I gasped in amazement, not at his cleverness as a brand-destroyer, but at his honest abandon. With a horrible operatic laugh, such as is painted in "The Cossack's Answer," he again laboriously drew () (the circle cross), and then added some marks which made it look like this: S()S. And again breaking into his devil's "ha, ha!" said, "Make the ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... the Russian church here. What was peculiar was the use of palm-branches instead of willows; and instead of boy choristers a choir of ladies, which gives the singing an operatic effect. They put foreign money in the plate; the verger and beadle speak French, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the same morning, the schooner lay-to off Hookena and a whaleboat came ashore. The village clustered on the rocks for the farewell: a grief perhaps—a performance certainly. We miss in our modern life these operatic consolations of the past. The lepers came singly and unattended; the elder first; the girl a little after, tricked out in a red dress and with a fine red feather in her hat. In this bravery, it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fytte of John Bulmer's adventures," he meditated, leisurely. "The woman is in some sort of trouble. If I go to her assistance I shall probably involve myself in a most unattractive mess, and eventually be arrested by the constable,—if they have any constables in this operatic domain, the which I doubt. I shall accordingly emulate the example of the long-headed Levite, and sensibly pass by on the other side. Halt! I there recognize the voice of the Duke of Ormskirk. I came into this country to find ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... now that we were there on an "Off day." By that they mean that no singers with great names took part. How like Americans to think of that! Germans go to the opera for the music. Americans go to hear and see the operatic stars. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... Parliament in Homburg while the prince was there, but his presence also drew representatives from every department of English life, the bench and the bar, writers of eminence of both sexes, distinguished artists, and people famous on both the dramatic and the operatic stage. The prince, with keen discrimination, had these interesting people always about him. There were also social leaders, whose entertainments were famous in London, who did their best to add to the ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... whose voice now commands thousands of dollars on the operatic stage, was placed under training at the joint expense of her benefactress and ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... this sense, it includes the whole general character or distinctive impression of any given workmanship in Art, and so is applicable to the Drama; as when we speak of a writer's tragic or comic style, or of such and such dramas as being in too operatic a style. The peculiarities of Shakespeare's style in this sense have been involved in the foregoing sections; so that I shall have no occasion to speak further of them in this general survey of the Poet's Art. The more restrained and ordinary meaning ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,—mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. For these latter, the only elements of good, or life, in the filthy mass of the story,[BM] observe that the author must filch the ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... soul, all the gorgeous display of great religious ceremonies was needed; the eighty thousand worshippers which it could hold, the great pontifical pomps, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, the processions and corteges displaying all the luxury of the Church amidst operatic scenery and appointments. And he tried to conjure up a picture of the past magnificence—the basilica overflowing with an idolatrous multitude, and the superhuman cortege passing along whilst every ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... sing. Those in figure 58 are the hands of a true artist on the piano and pipe organ. The true producing artist nearly always has square hands, with large thumbs set near the wrist, thus giving a wide reach between tip of thumb and tip of forefinger, as shown in figure 58. Actors and operatic singers sometimes have conical hands, with tapering fingers. They express emotion and beauty with voice, gesture, and facial expression rather than with ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... who believed the world hollow, and dolls stuffed with saw-dust, continually expatiating on the sufferings of early Christians. I have never read Fox's Book of Martyrs. With Mrs. Lucretia McSimpkins I had some relief. She was fond of operatic music, and, it is true, banged our piano out of tune at every visit,—indeed, her efforts resembled a boiler-maker's establishment under full headway; but, when she did subside, her perfect and refreshing ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... see the need of so many kinds of spoons," she said, as she transferred one of her gilt candelabra from the what-not to the contorted old rosewood centre-table: the candelabra were of an operatic cast—the one under removal represented (though all unknown to Eliza Marshall) Manrico and Leonora clasped in each other's arms beneath a bower-like tree. "Cut right through the middle, too—so that you could hardly tell whether they ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Of an operatic performance there could be no thought. The Chancellor cancelled his engagement, and the young men who had assembled for the rehearsals went quietly home. Herr von Erfft gave Daniel a considerable purse with which he might recompense his musicians for their trouble, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... go with M. Dumas to the opera, not, as we have said, for the music or the dancing, but because, as is the way with dramatic authors, he will there introduce us, for the sake of contrast with an institution very different from that of an operatic company— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... headed the revolt against the management of the other house. At that time the tide of popular success at Drury Lane had reached a rather low ebb, a painful circumstance due, no doubt, to the fickleness of a public that was beginning to tire of the favourite players and to betray a fondness for operatic and spectacular productions rather than the "legitimate." Christopher Rich, the manager of the theatre, was, like many of his kind, more given to considering the weight of his purse than the scant supply of sentiment with which nature might originally ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... at once, but became positively annoyed when I saw our Prax enter the cafe in a sort of mediaeval costume very much like what Faust wears in the third act. I have no doubt it was meant for a purely operatic Faust. A light mantle floated from his shoulders. He strode theatrically up to our table and addressing me as "Young Ulysses" proposed I should go outside on the fields of asphalt and help him gather ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... agitated Paris far more intensely than the defeat of Rossbach and the loss of Canada did afterwards. The quarrel between the Parliament and the Clergy was at its height. The Parliament had just been exiled, and the gravest confusion threatened the State. The operatic quarrel turned the excitement of the capital into another channel. Things went so far that the censor was entreated to prohibit the printing of any work containing the damnable doctrine and position ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... nekasxema. Open (uncork, etc.) malsxtopi. Open (of flowers) ekflori. Open-hearted malkovranima. Openly nekasxeme, tutkora. Opera opero. Opera-glass lorneto. Opera-house operejo. Operate (surgery) operacii. Operate funkcii. Operatic opera. Operation operacio. Operative metiisto. Operative agebla. Operetta opereto. Opinion, to be of an opinii. Opium opio. Opponent kontrauxulo. Opportune gxustatempa. Opportunity okazo. Oppose kontrauxmeti, kontrauxbatali. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... The Eyrie, Mr. and Mrs. Ripley lived, and here a great part of the associators would gather in the evenings. Of a summer night, when the moon was full, they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and shadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old ballads, or joined Tom Moore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights, there would be an original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakespere, with the parts distributed to different members; and, these amusements failing, some interesting discussion ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... speculating with borrowed money on the Stock Exchange. He had failed, and the loan advanced had not been repaid, when a fit of apoplexy struck him down. Offered the opportunity of trying her fortune on the operatic stage, Jeanne made the attempt, and was now nobly employed in earning the money to ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... gentlemen. The cards were of heavy gilt-edge board, embossed with the national coat-of-arms in gold, below which the name of each guest was written. The Marine Band performed selections from popular operatic music. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... following, which we take from the MS. journal of a highly respectable traveller, is a more correct account: "In 1812 a Signor Guariglia induced several young persons of both sexes—none of them exceeding fifteen years of age—to accompany him on an operatic excursion; part to form the opera, and part the ballet. He contrived to get them on board a vessel, which took them to Janina, where he sold them for the basest purposes. Some died from the effect of the climate, and some from suffering. Among the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... their business troubles and worries, if they have any. The oft-repeated platitude that you would never suspect here that a war was going on if you didn't read the papers is quite just. Conditions—on the surface—are so normal that there is even a lively operatic fight on in Munich, where the personal friction between Musical Director Walters and the star conductor, Otto Hess, has caused a crisis in the affairs of the Royal Munich Opera, rivaling in interest ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... founded the musical conservatory in that city. The sudden death of his favorite sister, Fannie, gave him such a shock that he died within a few months after her. Mendelssohn exerted little influence as an operatic composer, but achieved the highest rank by such vocal compositions as the oratorios "St. Paul" and "Elijah," and some of his beautiful songs, which have become folksongs. Of his orchestral pieces, the most famous ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... decipher perhaps the greater part of the Greek alphabet. In short, I am, as to classical education, another Shakespear. I can read French as easily as English; and under pressure of necessity I can turn to account some scraps of German and a little operatic Italian; but these I was never taught at school. Instead, I was taught lying, dishonorable submission to tyranny, dirty stories, a blasphemous habit of treating love and maternity as obscene jokes, hopelessness, evasion, derision, cowardice, and all the blackguard's shifts by ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... dine al fresco in the garden of some semi-foreign hotel, to taste the unconventional pleasures of the town, as if one were in some foreign city. She used to say that New York in matting and hollands was almost as nice as Buda-Pesth. These were really summer nights, operatic sorts of nights, with music floating in the air, gay groups in the streets, a stage imitation of nature in the squares with the thick foliage and the heavy shadows cast on the asphalt by the electric lights, the brilliant shops, the nonsense of the summer theatres, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... going to bed. You go. Friends and fatigue have equally been forgotten, and the evening has seemed so exquisitely long (or perhaps too short)! And do you remember that time when you were persuaded to sing in the chorus of the amateur operatic society, and slaved two hours every other night for three months? Can you deny that when you have something definite to look forward to at eventide, something that is to employ all your energy—the thought of that ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... in 1820, it was discovered that the foundations were not strong enough to bear heavy ordnance, and Congress reconveyed the site to the city. The building was then completed as an opera house, and used for operatic and theatrical performances, concerts, and public receptions. It was the largest and most elegant hall of its kind in the country, and was a favorite resort of pleasure seekers. Jenny Lind sang there, during her visit to the United States. ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... the Zionist, took his place. Sasha, however, did not read Hebrew, and old Tevkin had to be content with having the Four Questions read in English, the general answer to them being given by Tevkin and myself in Hebrew. It reminded me of an operatic performance in which the part of Faust, for instance, is sung in French, while that of Margarita is performed in some other language. We went on with the Story of the Deliverance. Tevkin made frequent pauses to explain ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... trousers, his coarse white shirt—the buttons of which were unfastened at the throat—and the collar loosely turned back, showing a bronzed chest, he looked like an operatic hero, the while he sat before his instrument and sang some of those wondrous songs dear to the heart of every Finn. He could hardly have been worthy of his land had he failed to be musical, born and bred in a veritable garden of song and sentiment, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... uncomfortable? Of course you know best: you brought him here originally; and we had the greatest hopes of him. His sentiments were in the best taste of our best people. You remember how he sang? [He begins to sing in a nasal operatic baritone, tremulous from an eternity of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... liberal scale, and she was a tactful and diplomatic hostess as well. She not only cultivated the right kind of people who were congenial to each other, but she always managed to have some guest of special distinction whom every one was eager to meet. Her own wide acquaintance among the prominent operatic artists and her husband's influential position in the world of finance made this policy an easy way of furthering her social ambitions. She would always invite some one whom she could present as the lion of the evening. One week it would be a tenor from the opera house, another time a famous ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... to Miss Church-Member, and seemed unlike anything she had ever heard. The operatic rendition of the music, the ritualistic cast of the prayer and the soothing effect of the rhetorical essay which took the place of a sermon, all exercised ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... number claims the machine. The basket chairs cost for the whole day twenty cents, Dutch money. One may obtain a subscription to the "Kurhaus" at a surprisingly reasonable rate for the day, week or season. There is a daily orchestra; ballet and operatic concerts once a week; dramatic performances and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... and originality may, and sometimes do, mask defects of emission, particularly in the case of artists following the operatic career. But the artistic life and success of such a singer is short. Violated Nature rebels, and avenges herself for all infractions of law. A voice that is badly produced or emitted speedily becomes worn, and is easily fatigued. By an additional exertion of physical force, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... blue men tumble about! Huzza! there's a fellow's head off,— How the dark red blood spouts out! And look, what a jolly bonfire!— Wants nothing but colored light! Oh, papa, burn a lot of cities, And burn the next one at night!' "'Yes, child, it is operatic; But don't forget, in your glee, That for your sake this play is playing, That you may be worthy of me. They baptized you in Jordan water,— Baptized as a Christian, I mean,— But you come of the race of ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... is picturesque, and to the foreign observer ever strikes a note of almost operatic strain. As the sun sets the peon dons his poncho, or serape, as the red blanket which is his invariable outer garment is termed. In the cool air of the morning or evening he speaks but little, covering his mouth with a corner of the serape, for he has a constant ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Didn't you see that most of the people were strangers? How could Lady Adela be sure that she was not wounding somebody's susceptibilities by having operatic music on a Sunday evening? She knew nothing at all about half those people; they were merely names to her, that she had collected round her in order that she might count ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... folded before him and eyes afar. He began to sing, a demi-voix, a little phrase out of Louise—an invocation to Paris—and the Englishman stirred uneasily beside him. It seemed to Hartley that to stand on a bridge, in a top-hat and evening clothes, and sing operatic airs while people passed back and forth behind you, was one of the things that are not done. He tried to imagine himself singing in the middle of Westminster Bridge at half-past eight of an evening, and he felt quite hot all over at the thought. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... for the evening promised to be an attractive one. A solo from Antoine Davilof, Lady Arabella's pet lion-cub of the moment; a song from the leading operatic tenor; and afterwards a single dance by the Wielitzska—who could never be persuaded to perform at any other private houses than those of her godmother and the Duchess of Lichbrooke—the former's half sister. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Burney, in the course of his tour in Germany (1772), much impressed by JOHANN FRIEDRICH AGRICOLA (1720-1774), court composer and director of the royal chapel to Frederick the Great. This Agricola was a pupil of Bach, and a fine organist and clever writer on music, especially on operatic style, the problems of which were beginning to be raised by French writers-and composers in preparation for the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and converse, the military band continues to play operatic selections, zarzuela medleys, pots-pourris of favourite airs and Cuban dances. At ten o'clock precisely the music ceases, and the band removes to the governor's house which faces the square. At a given ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... not. Mr. Kloot's orders. Can't have authors monkeying around here.' As he spoke Goldwater's voice rose from the neighbouring stage in an operatic melody, and reduced Pinchas's brain to chaos. A despairing sense of strange plots and treasons swept over him. He ran back to the lobby. The doors had been bolted. He beat against them with his cane and his fists ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... almost as angry as if she had learnt that he had been accepted.) Matthias Pardon had not yet taken his revenge in the newspapers; he was perhaps nursing his thunderbolts; at any rate, now that the operatic season had begun, he was much occupied in interviewing the principal singers, one of whom he described in one of the leading journals (Olive, at least, was sure it was only he who could write like that) as "a ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... in the evening, and taken a short stroll along the quay where a noisy band was discoursing operatic airs. The performance elicited from Mr. Muhlen some caustic comments on Latin music as contrasted with that of Russia and other countries. He evidently knew the subject. Mr. Heard, to whom music was Greek, soon found himself out of his depths. Later on, in the smoking-room, they had ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the opera occasionally; more or less under protest, because of its length, and because his mind was too practical for the indirect operatic form. He could not remain patient at a recital; the effort to listen to one performer for an hour and a half was too severe a tax upon his restless nature. The Philadelphia Orchestra gave a symphony concert each Saturday evening, and Bok ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... of an "unending melody," an unbroken flow of music intended to give cohesion and homogeneity to his music-dramas, was a direct consequence of the efforts of Mozart and Weber to give unity to their operatic works. For although these composers retained the old convention of an opera composed of separate numbers, they nevertheless managed to unify their operas by creating a distinct style in each of them, and by ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... pleasure—is the motto over this National Theatre door, and it is in the Ballet School here that the young Danes begin their training. These young folk take great pleasure in learning the beautiful dances, as well as in the operatic and dramatic work which they have to study, for they must serve a certain period in this, ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... sung to the words, though written by the famous Von Gluck, shows no sign of the genius of its author. Born at Weissenwang, near New Markt, Prussia, July 2, 1714, he spent his life in the service of operatic art, and is called "the father of the lyric drama," but he paid little attention to sacred music. Queen Marie Antoinette was for a while his ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... attractive, cheerful property, and there had been much feasting and revelry there not long before. It had been laid out for the famous singer who had sold it to Jenkins, and it exhibited traces of the imaginative genius peculiar to the operatic stage, in the bridge across the pond, where there was a sunken wherry filled with water-soaked leaves, and in its summer-house, all of rockwork, covered with climbing ivy. It had seen some droll sights, had that summer-house, in the singer's time, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet |
