[5] Durante passed from one Conservatory at Naples to another, and was necessarily professor at all three.
[6] M. Azevedo’s idea on the subject is certainly the best. “Since its production,” he says, “on the stage and in the universe it has been made the subject of a canticle for the Catholic Church, like all other successful airs. But a litany before the air and a canticle after the air are not the same thing.” M. Azevedo also rejects the rice.
[7] “Le ombreggiature per le messe di voce, il cantar di partarrenti, l’arte di fermare la voce per farla fluire equale nel canto legato, l’arte di prender flato in modo insensibile e senza troncare il lungo periodo vocale delle arte antiche.” This passage is from Carpani. Stendhal, not finding it easy to translate, gives it, in Italian, as his own, and endeavours to explain his use of the Italian language by saying that he finds “an almost insurmountable difficulty in writing about singing in French.” This mania for “adaptation” makes one doubt the originality of everything Stendhal has done.
[8] There is nothing to prove that Rossini entertained any such opinion of Velluti’s singing.
[9] A: Théâtres Lyriques de Paris, “L’Opéra Italien,” p. 317.
[10] Cardinal Gonsalvi was devoted to music and had a sincere attachment to Cimarosa, the greatest Italian composer of his time. “At the commencement of my ministry (secretaryship of state),” he writes in his memoirs, “I experienced two very great afflictions, not to speak of many others. One had no connection with my office: it was the death of my great friend Domenico Cimarosa, the first composer, in my opinion, both for inspiration and science, as Raphael is the first of painters.” In Cardinal Gonsalvi’s will the following passage occurs:—“Fifty masses a year for the repose of the soul of the celebrated maestro Domenico Cimarosa, to be said in the church of the Rotunda on the 11th of January, the anniversary of his death, with the gift of the paoli.” Cimarosa had then been dead upwards of twenty years, but the Cardinal forgot neither him nor his family, as will be seen from the following clauses in the same will:—“To the nun Cimarosa at the convent of the Infant Jesus, one hundred ounces of silver and the snuff-box with the portrait of her father; moreover the annual pension of forty crowns spoken of in the will to be increased to eighty. To Paulina Cimarosa one hundred ounces of silver and all the music of her father with his large portrait, the whole free of carriage to Naples; moreover an annual pension of seventy-two crowns.”
[11] Dictionnaire Musicale, Article Orchestre. Rousseau wrote the dictionary in 1754, though it was not published for some years afterwards.
[12] See Ferdinand Hiller’s Conversations with Rossini.
[13] Beaumarchais gave music lessons to Louis XV.’s daughters. To put forward a more positive proof of his acquirements in this art, he composed the incidental music of his own dramas.
[14] Préface du “Barbier de Seville,” 1775.