The Queen remained deep in thought and gloomy; she did not know how to conceal her thoughts. The King knew that she would scold him severely for being too familiar with Sulkowski; he sighed and longed for the opera, where, in his musical ecstasies, he might forget the sorrows that were unavoidable in private life, even though he occupied a throne where he could sit half the day smoking a pipe in a robe de chambre and smiling at the fancies of a slow imagination.
Sulkowski and Guarini slipped out, leaving the consorts alone, which was the best way of putting the Queen into a better frame of mind.
[CHAPTER XIV]
One of the greatest enjoyments of the court of Saxony during the reign of both Augustus's was the opera, one of the best of those times in Europe and in some respect perhaps even superior to the most famous theatres and orchestras.
Excellent as was the selection of singers in Augustus the Strong's times, the opera was in no way inferior during the reign of his son, who was also fond of music. While listening to the music he was exempt from talking, which he disliked, and permitted to plunge into reverie, in which he spent almost his whole life.
The French singers of the King, at the head of whom was Louis André, numbered about twenty and with them from time to time sang Germans, such as the tenor Gotzel, and Italians such as Annibal.
The court orchestra under the famous Hasse, Faustina's husband in name, was composed of fifty members; besides this there was also a Polish orchestra for chamber music, conducted by Schltze, which consisted of seventeen members. The King would take it to Warsaw when staying there a long time.
Operas and French comedies were performed by turns, for which purpose there were eleven actors and sixteen actresses, and in order to vary the performance there was a French ballet composed of sixty people under the direction of M. Faxier.
Enormous sums of money were spent to maintain so large a company. When they were going to give Hasse's opera 'Egio,' for which Metastasio wrote the libretto on the triumph of Caesar, conqueror of barbarism, there were on the stage a hundred horses, the whole Roman senate, knights, lictors, pretorian guards, heavy and light cavalry, infantry; and the booty was represented by gold and silver lent from the king's treasury for use on the stage. The spectators were amazed, the members of the orchestra were stupefied, and it is a fact that the drummer made a hole in the drum from sheer astonishment. There were two hundred and fifty people on the stage; the opera house was lighted with eight thousand wax candles and the manager was brought specially from Paris; his name was Servadoni. Some of the performances cost as much as 100,000 thalers.
Faustina Bordoni, still beautiful in figure and fascinating in voice, made a great impression on Augustus III. The same opera would be repeated again and again for months and the enthusiastic and dreamy king never tired of the same songs, which would lull him charmingly in the land of dreams.