“As there was no great danger,” says he, “of hurting the sense of these extraordinary pieces, our authors would often make words of their own which were entirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go to the same tune. Thus the famous song in Camilla,
‘Barbara si t’intendo,’ etc.
‘Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning,’
which expresses the resentment of an angry lover, was translated into that English lamentation,
‘Frail are a lover’s hopes,’ etc.
And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of the British nation dying away and languishing to notes that were filled with the spirit of rage and indignation. It happened also very frequently where the sense was rightly translated; the necessary transposition of words, which were drawn out of the phrase of one tongue into that of another, made the music appear very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the other. I remember an Italian verse that ran thus, word for word:
‘And turned my rage into pity,’
which the English, for rhyme’s sake, translated,
‘And into pity turned my rage.’
By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian fell upon the word ‘rage’ in the English; and the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original were made to express pity in the translation. It oftentimes happened likewise that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant word in the sentence. I have known the word ‘and’ pursued through the whole gamut; have been entertained with many a melodious ‘the;’ and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon ‘then,’ ‘for,’ and ‘from,’ to the eternal honour of our English particles.”[19]
Perceiving these radical defects, Addison seems to have been ambitious of showing by example how they might be remedied. “The great success this opera (Arsinoe) met with produced,” says he, “some attempts of forming pieces upon Italian plans, which should give a more natural and reasonable entertainment than what can be met with in the elaborate trifles of that nation. This alarmed the poetasters and fiddlers of the town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware, and therefore laid down an established rule, which is received as such to this day, ‘That nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.’”[20] The allusion to the failure of the writer’s own opera of Rosamond is unmistakable. The piece was performed on the 2d of April, 1706, but was coldly received, and after two or three representations was withdrawn.