"All a calumny, my young friend; pure calumny, I can assure you. There are so many Don Basilios in the musical world! Rossini's music was hissed because it was bad and because it recalled to the public Paisiello's, which was good." "But I have heard," rejoined Donizetti, "that at the second representation there was a great deal of applause, and that the enthusiasm of the audience at last reached such a point, that they honoured Rossini with a torch-light procession and conducted him home in triumph."
"An invention of the newspapers," replied Sigismondi; "I believe there was a certain clique present prepared to support the composer through everything, but the public had already expressed its opinion. Never mind this musical burlesque, and let us take a glance at one of Rossini's serious operas."
Donizetti wished for nothing better. This time he had no occasion to scale the shelf in his former feline style. The librarian produced the key of the mysterious closet in which the ladder was kept. The young musician ran up to the Rossini shelf like a lamp-lighter and brought down with him not one but half-a-dozen volumes.
"Too many, too many," said Sigismondi, "one would have been quite enough. Well, let us open Otello."
In the score which the old and young musician proposed to examine together, the three trombone parts, according to the Italian custom, were written on one and the same staff, thus 1º, 2º, 3º tromboni. Sigismondi began his lecture on the enormities of Rossini as displayed in Otello by reading the list of the instruments employed.
"Flutes, two flutes; well there is not much harm in that. No one will hear them; only, with diabolical perfidy, one of these modern flutists will be sure to take a piccolo and pierce all sensitive ears with his shrill whistling.
"Hautboys, two hautboys; also good. Here Rossini follows the old school. I say nothing against his two hautboys; indeed, I quite approve of them.
DONIZETTI AND ROSSINI.
"Clarionets! a barbarous invention, which the Tedeschi might have kept them for themselves. They may be very good pipes for calling cows, but should be used for nothing else.
"Bassoons; useless instruments, or nearly so. Our good masters employed them for strengthening the bass; but now the bassoon has acquired such importance, that solos are written for it. This is also a German innovation. Mozart would have done well to have left the bassoon in its original obscurity.