Herr Wagner, Professor of the "Music of the Future," appears, in conducting at the Philharmonic, to have made strange work with the music of all time. He alters Mozart, it appears, if not exactly as a parish clerk once said that he had altered Haydn for the singing gallery, yet in a manner nearly as audacious, altering "allegro" to "moderato"; "andante" to "adagio"; "allegretto" to "andante"; and "allegro" again to "prestissimo." Wagner would seem strongly to resemble his namesake in Faust, in the particular wherein that Wagner differs from his master—that is, in the circumstance of being no conjuror.
The sudden disappearance of that Italianized Westphalian, the fiery Cruvelli, was a nine days' wonder in the operatic world in 1854 and is duly chronicled in Punch. Towards the end of this period Piccolomini, a singer of small calibre but attractive personality, achieved great popularity in the rôle of the consumptive heroine of La Traviata, and Punch celebrated the craze of "Piccolomania," as he called it, in the following travesty:—
Art is long and time is fleeting,
But of genius the soul,
Ordinary talent beating,
Reaches at one stride the goal.
In the operatic battle,
In the Prima Donna's life
Quit the herd—the vocal cattle,
Be a Grisi in the strife.