“I think she has miscarried in nothing but her singing, her acting and her speaking,” replied Mr. Hartford.
“She certainly does not sing as well as she did. She has sung too much; her voice is worn out.”
“You were speaking of the absurdity of the opera, Mrs. Althorp,” said Hartford. “The matter has certainly not been improved since the time when the Earl of Chesterfield settled it, that when you go to the opera, you must take leave of your understanding and your senses with your half guinea at the door, and give yourself up to the dominion of the ears and eyes; in other words, you must live by sight, and not by faith. But the repugnancy to reason is increased by the manner of performing them in this country, where part of the dialogue is spoken. The illusion of the opera is by that means destroyed. You may in time become accustomed to a race of beings whose natural dialect is poetry, and whose common cadences are music; but a set of people who let us see from time to time that they can talk like ourselves, and who yet, whenever they are excited, break out into modulated strains of song—who speak their common-places, and warble their exclamations—such people shock our credulity.”
“Yet it would seem that at Athens, where they knew something about these things,” said Mr. Temple, “the same confusion of the natural and the impossible prevailed on the stage. The chorus usually chanted its part, and was accompanied by music; and as we find that the persons of the drama, in conversing with them, frequently adopt the measure of verse which they sung, we must suppose that the former at such times sang. The chorus also often employs the rhythm which was used in speaking, and thus seems to have used the double dialect of recitation and singing. Nay, the chorus, as it circled the altar, employed a gliding step which resembled dancing; so that the Greek drama partook of the threefold nature of our tragedy, opera and ballet.”
“I have lost all my respect for the taste of the Greeks,” said Mrs. Althorpe, “since I heard that they painted their temples.”
“It was savage, indeed, to paint their temples,” said Mr. Hartford; “the more refined moderns only paint their cheeks.”
“The French are the modern Athenians,” said Miss Stanhope. “De Bourrienne says that the soldiers who were with Napoleon in Egypt complained bitterly of their privations, and longed especially for the opera.”
“Do you know who that person is that is talking to the leader of the orchestra?” said Miss Stanhope, directing the attention of Mrs. Althorpe to a young man of very striking appearance, who stood just within the door of the orchestra, and who seemed to be giving some directions that were listened to with great attention.
“Oh! that is Mr. Nivernois,” said Mrs. Althorpe; “a very odd person, by the by; I intended to have sent for him to sup with us to-night.”
After a few moments, the door of the box opened, and Mr. Nivernois came in. There was something very remarkable in his appearance: regular, well-chiselled features, of an Italian cast; pale complexion; large, black, vivid eyes, and long, straight black hair; in his countenance was an aspect of force and fire, keen intellectual action, and the power of deep passion. He was negligently dressed, and was very careless in his manner.