Surely Othello and Moses with high women’s voices would not be more utterly incongruous.
In justice, I must say that Bellini has got a most beautiful effect in a really powerful incident. The lovers, dragged apart by angry parents, tear themselves free and rush into each other’s arms, crying: “We meet again in heaven.”
He has used a quick, impassioned motif, sung in unison, that expresses most eloquently the idea of perfect union.
I was unwontedly moved, and applauded heartily. Thinking that I had better know the worst that Italian opera could perpetrate, had better—as it were—drink the cup to the dregs, I went to hear Paccini’s Vestal. Although I knew it had nothing in common with Spontini’s opera, I little dreamed of the bitterness of the cup I had to face. Licinius, again, was a woman.... After a few minutes’ painfully strained attention I cried, with Hamlet, “Wormwood! wormwood!” and fled, feeling I could swallow no more, and stamping so hard that my great toe was sore for three days after.
Poor Italy!
At least, thought I, it will be better in the churches. This was what I heard.
A funeral service for the elder son of Louis Bonaparte and Queen Hortense was being held.
What thoughts crowded into my mind as I stood amid the flaming torches in the crape-hung church! A Bonaparte! His nephew, almost his grandson, dead at twenty; his mother, with his only brother, an exile in England.
I thought of the gay creole child dancing on the deck of the ship that carried her to France, untitled daughter of Madame Beauharnais, adopted daughter of the master of Europe, Queen of Holland, exiled, forgotten, bereft, without a kingdom, without a home!
Oh, Beethoven! Great soul! Titan, who couldst conceive the Eroica and the Funeral March, is not this a meet subject for thy genius?...