Carmen and Rigoletto

Usage examples of operas.

The two Figaro operas, the discussion of which opened this book, were composed by different men, and a generation of time separated their production.

Especially was this true of English ballad operas and English transcriptions, or adaptations, of French, German, and Italian operas.

Theatre and was not revived until 1822--a year in which the popularity of Rossini in the British metropolis may be measured by the fact that all but four of the operas brought forward that year were composed by him.

French operas by Rousseau, Monsigny, Dalayrac, and Gretry, which may be said to have composed the staple of the opera-houses of Europe in the last decades of the eighteenth century, were known also in the contemporaneous theatres of Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.

Some day--soon, it is to be hoped--managers, singers, and public will awake to a realization that, even in the old operas in which beautiful singing is supposed to be the be-all and end-all, the action ought to be kept coherent.

One effect, I fancy, would be to make the elder of the operas sound younger than its companion, because of the greater variety and freshness, as well as dramatic vigor, of its music.

Before Mozart, Le Tellier had used it for a French comic opera, Righini and Gazzaniga for Italian operas, and Gluck for a ballet.

Even the German critics of to-day seem dense in their unwillingness to credit Mozart with a purely amiable purpose in quoting the operas of his rivals, Martin and Sarti.

French, German, English, Italian, Russian, and Polish Faust operas have come into existence, lived their little lives, and died.

Boito has refused to permit the opera or operas which he has written since to be either published or performed because the world once refused to recognize his genius.

From the story drawn from the records of the Bohemian law court, it is plain that to make a compact with the Wild Huntsman was a much more gruesome and ceremonious proceeding than that which took place between Faust and the Evil One in the operas of Gounod and Boito.

He continued in Dresden the plan first put into practice by him in Prague of printing articles about new operas in the newspapers to stimulate public appreciation of their characteristics and beauties.

It was Wagner who created the contradiction which puts his operas in opposition by his substitution of the sacred lance as a dramatic motive for the question.

The first of these operas has long since been forgotten, but Monteverde made a prodigious effect with his.

Among these the more distinguished names are those of Cavalli, who wrote thirty-four operas for Venice alone, Legrenzi and Cesti.