She was a principessa in the kingdom of art, and was that not something much loftier than if her ancestors had stood proudly in the golden book of Venice?
Filled with such feelings and thoughts, Blanden joined vigorously in the outbursts of applause with which the finale of the performance was distinguished; yes, in the entr'acte he had bought the last bouquet of the flower-girl, and thrown it to the triumphant actress. She took it up indifferently amongst the others; she did not know from whom it came.
Had she yesterday cast the flowers into the water so as to bury all recollections? Here they returned again as the first greeting of a newly awakening love! Yet she in that bouquet perceived but one of those evidences of homage which were lavished so numerously upon her art!
Not long afterwards Blanden was sitting with Professor Reising, Dr. Kuhl and Schöner in the comfortable cellar of the Court of Criminal Justice.
Reising was in a good temper; he had shaken off his female retinue; the four sisters had been invited to a tea-party after the theatre.
"Italian music," said Reising, "that is true music! How much Hegel was delighted with the starring tours of those Italian voices in Vienna! Music, like every art, must be the one object; the kingdom of notes has its own action and splendour; the opera singers must sing like nightingales and rejoice in the presumptuousness of song in those ascending and descending runs, in those stirring trills, in those sharp, foaming pearls of self-sufficing capriccios. Who would enquire whether that music is always adapted to the libretto? The story is a necessary evil; it is the perch in the cage, because the bird must sit somewhere.
"Intellectual music, that is the subtlety of the mind. People have compared music with arithmetic only because it rests upon unknown numbers. Good Heavens! then may the musicians at least remain at the four elementary rules, and not lose themselves in the differential and integral calculus! It is a cruel mistake wishing to express every possible thing by music; music can express nothing but the mind's emotions. In all else it acts with divine freedom; I acknowledge that I am an utter Italian in music, and love to revel with it in its own riches!"
"As we, however, possess an opera," replied Blanden, "and as music is bound to dramatic situations, it must also give a suitable expression to them; yet it does not exist merely on account of that expression, else it would move in constant servitude. It is a free art and its own ruler in its dominion!"
"An enchanting Norma such as ours, renders all artistic theories superfluous," cried Schöner with enthusiasm.
"But to-day," replied Kuhl, "we missed the poems wafted down from the chandelier; on other occasions our friend has a new sonnet for each character. The liberty of nations must wait when Signora Bollini is extolled."