Lasciatemi morire!
Was it Ariadne, still Ariadne, weeping in some new grief, still rising to higher martyrdom?
E che volete
Che mi conforte
In cosa dure sorte,
In cosi gran martire?
Lasciatemi morire!
The voice ceased; the singer did not reappear. The aria of Claudio Monteverde composed itself in the auditors' memories like an immutable lineament.
"Is there any Greek marble that has a perfection of style more sure and simple?" said Daniele Glauro softly, as if he feared to break the musical silence.
"But what sorrow on earth ever has wept like that?" stammered Lady Myrta, her eyes full of tears, that ran down her poor, pale cheeks, which she wiped with her trembling hands, misshaped by gout.
The austere intellect of the ascetic and the sweet, sensitive soul shut within the old, infirm body bore witness to the same power. In the same way, nearly three centuries before, at Mantua, in the famous theater, six thousand spectators had been unable to repress their sobs; and the poets had believed in the living presence of Apollo on the new stage.
"See, Baldassare," said Stelio, "here is an artist of our own race who by the simplest means succeeded in attaining the highest degree of that beauty which the German but rarely approached in his confused aspirations toward the land of Sophocles."
"Do you know the lament of the ailing king?" asked the young man with the sunny locks, which he wore long as a heritage from the Venetian Sappho, the "high Gaspara," unfortunate friend of Collalto.
"All the agony of Amfortas is contained in a mottetto that I know: Peccantem me quotidie, but with what lyric impetus, what powerful simplicity! All the forces of tragedy are there, sublimated, so to speak, like the instincts of a multitude in a heroic heart. The language of Palestrina, much more ancient, appears to me still purer and more virile.