"Opera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Les femmes, en general, n'aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent a aucun et n'ont aucun genie (Lettre a d'Alembert, note xx.). Every one who can see through a sham must have found this to be the case. One need only watch the way they behave at a concert, the opera, or the play; the childish simplicity, for instance, with which they keep on chattering during the finest passages in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks forbade women to go to the play, they acted in a right ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the farmer, "that it would be more fun to shoot at a mark than to give pain to some living creature. But a gun is a poor toy, at the best, Frank. Ask your father for a good pair of opera- glasses, and study the birds instead of killing them. We know very little yet about any of them. See if you can't bring me a bit of news about some of our feathered neighbors before the summer is over. I'm a real bird-gossip, you know, ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... Hugh, fanning himself composedly with a newspaper, "my day is not yet, though as I've told you before I'm like the fellow in the comic opera, there is that within me that tells me that when my time does come the convulsion will be tremendous! When I love, it will be with the accumulated fervour of sixty-six years! But I have an ideal—a semi-transparent Being filled with an inorganic ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... black frock-coats, sitting very rigidly in upright chairs, trying to drink tea with one hand. One might see athletic young college men of the football team trying hard to talk about Italian music; and Italian tenors from the Grand Opera doing their best to talk about college football. There were young men in business talking about art, and young men in art talking about religion, and young clergymen talking about business. Because, of course, the Rasselyer-Brown residence was the kind of cultivated ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... sends him many merry and kind compliments and messages; and sends him, moreover, her new books as soon as they are out, most magnificently bound; but all won't do. He only says, "If she'd please me, she'd give up that cursed opera-box. Why, the rent of that thing—only to sit in and hear Italian women squealing and squalling, and to see impudent, outlandish baggages kicking up their heels higher than any decent heads ought to be—the rent, I say, would maintain a parish rector, or keep half-a-dozen ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... and the whole story would come out. It was like having a key come into her hands—a key that would unlock all those mysteries which were her terror. She was still irresolute, however, as to using it after she had taken an old opera-cloak from a wardrobe, thrown it over her shoulders, and gone ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... time the Prince sat back in the shadows of the Duchess of Devenham's box at the Opera and talked quietly to ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the season have certainly been the Friendship Fete, the Kamtchatkan Scriptural opera-ballet, "Noe s'embarque sur ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... time ago, at the Bibliotheque Nationale, the original manuscript slips made in 1684 by the royal librarian, Nicolas Clement, for his catalogue of the books confided to his care, I found one inscribed: "Will. Shakspeare, poeta Anglicus. Opera poetica, continentia tragoedias, comoedias et historiolas, Anglice, Londres, Th. Cotes, 1632, fol." And to this, considering that he had to deal with a thoroughly unknown person, Clement was careful to add a note that people ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... as the rarest treat that I could offer, I had promised my guests that they should hear Lady Mabel in all her glorious richness of voice; and now she is seized with a sudden fit of modesty, and protests against being exhibited before a motly crowd like an opera singer." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... then took his opera-glass, recognized her, and, dizzy with violent emotion, sat down once more to ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... costs him a volume to define. Thus, if in one page he appears to confound knowledge with power, in another he sets them in the strongest antithesis to each other; as follows, "Adeo, signanter Deus opera potentiae et sapientiae diseriminavit." But it would be as unfair to Bacon to convert into an aphorism the sentence that discriminates between knowledge and power as it is to convert into an aphorism any ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... a few nights later, the audience literally filled every available space in the Grand Opera House and overflowed into the adjoining streets. This audience was in many respects the most remarkable that the city had ever seen. The entire orchestra was given over to the white citizens of Natchez and Adams County, ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... between Paris of the present and the Paris of two hundred years ago. With a power more destructive than the petroleum of the Commune, we must, in though, sweep away the Tuileries, the boulevards, the Opera-House and superb buildings that surround the Champs Elysees; on their sites we must build old, tottering, ill-shaped houses, six and seven stories high, confining narrow and dirty streets that wind in lanes and alleys into serpentine ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the same use of their arms and legs, and inform their faces with as significant looks and passions, how glorious would an English tragedy appear with that action which is capable of giving a dignity to the forced thoughts, cold conceits, and unnatural expressions of an Italian opera! In the meantime, I have related this combat of the lion to show what are at present the reigning entertainments of the politer ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... between the Opera and the Exhibition of Electricity is obtained by means of twenty conducting wires, which are divided between two halls hung with carpets to deaden external noises. We represent in the accompanying engraving one of these halls, and the one which is lighted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... perfectly clear that she could not have heard us coming in. In fact, she must have been certain that the house was empty, because she was as well aware as myself that the Italian girls after their work at the opera were going to a masked ball to dance for their own amusement, attended of course by their conscientious father. But what thought, need, or sudden impulse had driven Therese out of bed like this was ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... interesting to watch. Leoncavallo had as a guest the famous ex-bull-fighter Mazzantini; a Russian prince entertained several beauties of the Opera; and there were two or three politicians greatly in the public eye. We were hungry; the dinner was good; there was much to talk over; and all seemed to be ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sometimes has a fascination for young men of that class of character. In saying the stage, I mean the people on it of the female sex. Therefore, when I heard that my son was supposed to be fascinated by a dancer, I knew what that usually meant in Society, and confided in her being a dancer at the Opera, where young men moving in Society are ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... after many experiments learned the correct pitch for conversation with old Teidelmann, talked with him as much aside as the circumstances of the case would permit. Hasluck never wasted time on anything else than business. It was in his opera box on the first night of Verdi's Aida (I am speaking of course of days then to come) that he arranged the details of his celebrated deal in guano; and even his very religion, so I have been told and can believe, he varied to suit the enterprise of the moment, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... smoked and pondered. So she played the violin! played it wonderfully, as the count had declared. He was passionately fond of music. In London, in Paris, in Berlin, in Vienna, he had been an untiring, unfailing patron of the opera. Some night he resolved to listen at the window, providing the window was open. Yes, a hundred times Chuck was right. Any other girl, and this jest might have passed capitally; but he wanted the ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... "I was at Mrs. Robbie Walling's last night," she said. "She was talking about the crowds at the opera, and she said she was going to withdraw to some place where she wouldn't have to see such mobs of ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... trowed down his gun and said he'd be d—— if he would be bossed by a guy like that, he changed his mind to d—— often. Skinny is always like that. Ever since he's been here, he's been braggin what a fine singer he is; said his voice was trained for Grand Opera. He sang for us last night, a song, entitled "God give us cheap ice, for Heaven's knows we have cheap skates." Believe you me, his voice was trained for Grand Rapids ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... are a compound of malignity and meanness, without any abilities; and are quite different from the Italian magician. King James says in his Daemonology, 'Magicians command the devils: witches are their servants. The Italian magicians are elegant beings.' RAMSAY. 'Opera witches, not Drury-lane witches.' Johnson observed, that abilities might be employed in a narrow sphere, as in getting money, which he said he believed no man could do, without vigorous parts, though concentrated to a point[1162]. RAMSAY. 'Yes, like a strong horse ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... be a sad day to me, sir," continued Mrs. Blacklock, as she glanced at her son, who was whistling an air from the last opera, as indifferent as though his mother had been at peace in her ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... I hadn't considered," said the banker, reaching for the brandy. He nodded to himself as he poured it, then looked up at Bezdek and asked, "But why this—space opera is the colloquial term, I believe? Why not stick closer to ...
— Reel Life Films • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... (Miscellanea Nova, p. 49) tells how from old Mr. Sheridan's house in Bedford-street, opposite Henrietta-street, with an opera-glass he watched Johnson approaching. 'I perceived him at a good distance working along with a peculiar solemnity of deportment, and an awkward sort of measured step. Upon every post as he passed along, he deliberately laid his hand; but missing one of them, when he had got at some distance he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... end of a week he had an idea that he acted upon with eager precipitancy. She had let fall some word, at their last meeting, of a taste for music. Trent went that evening, and thenceforward regularly, to the opera. He might see her; and if, in spite of his caution, she caught sight of him, they could be blind to each other's presence—anybody might happen ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... travelling-bag, stereoscope with six views, silver napkin-ring, compound microscope, lady's work-box, sheet-music or books worth $5.00. For TWENTY, at $1.60 each, select any one of the following: a fine croquet-set, a powerful opera-glass, a toilet case, Webster's Dictionary (unabridged), sheet-music or ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... whose traditions were Conservative. He was to be, five years later, one of the leaders in that curious conspiracy, the MacKenzie-Mann-Berthiaume-La Presse deal—the details of which as told by Professor Skelton read like a detective yarn—which was turned into opera bouffe by Laurier's decisive and timely interference. In 1902, Tarte, in Laurier's absence and in the belief that he could not resume the premiership on account of illness, attempted to seize the successorship by pre-emption, and was ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... poet Ewald are deservedly popular in Denmark. The present tragedy, and the opera of "The Fishermen" ("Fiskerne"), in which occurs the bold lyric which has become the national song of the Danes, are ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... of worshippers and worshipped to the door of his suite, but no further, because of his dressing-gown. Rose Euclid had assumed a resplendent opera-cloak. They rang imperially for the lift. Lackeys bowed humbly before them. They spoke of taxi-cabs and other luxuries. They were perfectly at home in the grandeur of the hotel. As the illuminated lift carried them down out of sight, their smiling heads disappearing last, they seemed exactly like ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... different from what she appeared." This passage is interesting because it shows us how rare was the exception. A century later, however, homosexuality among English women seems to have been regarded by the French as common, and Bacchaumont, on January 1, 1773, when recording that Mlle. Heinel of the Opera was settling in England, added: "Her taste for women will there find attractive satisfaction, for though Paris furnishes many tribades it is said that London ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... said Puddy. "I met a publisher from New York at the opera last night who objected to ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... seems, communicative over a bottle of claret, when an agreement for the above purpose was entered into between them. This was subsequently carried into effect, and a drama was composed. This drama, still extant in the British Museum, in Lamb's own writing, appears to be a species of comic opera, the scene of which is laid in Gibraltar, but is without a name. I have not seen it, but speak upon ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... that to be strictly accurate my tragedy should be called a tragic opera. It abounds in songs calculated to stir familiar chords in the breasts of a popular and ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... this person in a fur-lined coat and an opera hat, sitting in a room which was papered with photographs, chiefly of the nude and the semi-nude, intermingled with sheafs of playbills that hung from the walls like ballads, from the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... secure in his right, he rebelled against the restraint he had proposed to himself, and at dinner he invited the ladies to go to the opera with him. He chose to show himself in public with them, and to check any impression that they were without due protection. As usual, the pit was full of officers, and between the acts they all rose, as usual, and faced the boxes, which ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... good is all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family connections? He's at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he's about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how she looks, you know it's better for all hands for her ...
— Options • O. Henry
... him was next to seeing the emperor. I never expected the pleasure, but here it is allotted me. He is quite an old man in his bearing and gait. He was dressed in a blue coat with metal buttons, wore his star and garter, and had on black tights and shoes. He had been to the opera, and then came to this party. Every one pays the most deferential homage to the old hero. Waterloo and its eventful scenes came directly before me, and I felt almost impatient for our visit ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... seemed to be in balls, and there was absolutely no interest shown in Mozart, the child prodigy. Also much jealousy was shown towards the Mozarts by other musicians, and when Wolfgang set to work on an opera, to be used with the text written for him by the Viennese dramatic poet of the day, and had already completed a score of six hundred and fourteen pages, it was said that Wolfgang had not written it at all, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of some one coming up behind to snatch the nasty relic from them. At times the women knelt down in a group, with the men leaning over them. After all, the music was not the only thing wanting to make one imagine oneself at the opera. The necklaces of the women were chiefly of teeth—bears' the most common—human ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... instance the naturalness with which the players often declaim monologues lasting for a quarter or half an hour. The extravagances which here shock us are perhaps on the whole not more absurd than the scenes of the opera of to-day, or the buskins, masks, and peculiar dresses, which the Greeks considered indispensable in the exhibition of then great dramatic masterpieces. When the Japanese have been able to appropriate what is good in European culture, the dramatic art ought to have a grand future ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... and worn long beneath his peruke, he certainly justified the endearing name of "Bonny Prince Charlie." The distinction of his air could be concealed by no disguise, as his followers loved fondly to declare. He certainly had the royal memory for faces. At the opera, in 1773, he noticed an English officer opposite, whom he sent for. The gentleman visited the royal box, accompanied by a Scotch servant. "I have seen you before," said Charles to this man. "You once brought me a message ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... beating drums, and so on—making a horrible din. Sometimes, in the midst of all this wild confusion, a kind of French courtier would come mincing along, in old-fashioned costume, leading a lady, also in antique attire, and, gazing on the right hand and the left through an immense opera-glass, making, in the meantime, the most polite bows. However much he might be pushed about, or powdered, it mattered not; he only gazed through his opera-glass, and bowed all the more, and never lost his self-possession. In the midst of all this whirl and confusion comes a brilliant procession: ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... previously nicknamed him Babet le bouquetiere, at first because the abbe always introduced flowers into his poetry; afterward, on account of the resemblance he bore to a flower girl who used to sell bouquets at the doors of the Opera.] ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... essentially different, and could in no manner or degree depend on the same laws. Of the same kind, also, was the prejudice against which Bacon contended, that nothing produced by nature could be successfully imitated by man: "Calorem solis et ignis toto genere differre; ne scilicet homines putent se per opera ignis, aliquid simile iis quae in Natura fiunt, educere et formare posse;" and again, "Compositionem tantum opus Hominis, Mistionem vero opus solius Naturae esse: ne scilicet homines sperent aliquam ex arte Corporum naturalium generationem aut transformationem."(242) ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... | |matter. The climax comes when Mr. | |Constable tries to get away from his wife | |on the evening of their wedding | |anniversary to dine with Mrs. Alloway. | |Kitty tries the emancipated woman idea | |and goes to the opera with another man | |and has dinner with him in his | |apartments. She lets her husband know of | |her plans and he comes to the room in a | |rage. By thus playing first on his | |jealousy and then by ridiculing his | |ideas, she wins him back to herself. The | |company ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... to very brilliant talk. Tho prattle and persiflage have their place in conversation, talkers of the highest order tire of continually encouraging chit-chat. "What a piece of business; monstrous! I have not read it; impossible to get a box at the opera for another fortnight; how do you like my dress? It was immensely admired yesterday at the B——s; how badly your cravat is tied! Did you know that —— lost heavily by the crash of Thursday? That dear man's death gave me ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... interesting Musical Anecdotes; the Greek Fables respecting the origin of Music; the rise and progress of Musical Instruments; the early Musical Drama; the origin of our present fashionable Concerts; the first performance of the Beggar's Opera, &c. ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... finest is the Largo do Rocio; the largest, the Largo St. Anna. In the first, which is always kept tolerably clean, stand the Opera-house, the Government-house, the Police-office, etc. This, too, is the starting-place for most of the omnibuses, which traverse the town ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... immense country houses and yachts (the owning of opera boxes goes a little further back) first attacked this country, the builders imagined that, once completed, it would be the easiest, as well as the most delightful task to fill them with the pick of their friends, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... freezing night, in lack of fuel for a fire, cuts his cherished plants in order to entertain a wandering friar. The friar is in reality no other than Hojo-Tokiyori, the Haroun-Al-Raschid of our tales, and the sacrifice is not without its reward. This opera never fails to draw tears from a ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... or distorts them will hold up a false mirror to life. If an inhabitant of another planet should visit the earth, he would receive, on the whole, a truer notion of human life by attending an Italian opera than he would by reading Emerson's volumes. He would learn from the Italian opera that there were two sexes; and this, after all, is probably the fact with which the education of such ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... my dear friend, from the style which Mme. Mercadet puts on; you see her at all the first nights, in her own box, at the opera, and her conspicuous elegance— ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... could. But I've met one, boy! Gad! What a splendid creature! You know there isn't much in the world I haven't seen—north, south, east and west. I know all the advertised beauties of Europe and Asia—stage, opera, and ballet, and all the rest of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... frontiers. Forty soldiers, who had been sent to the galleys, are set at liberty. Establishment of a new high national court. Manuel causes the letters of Mirabeau, which were found in the mayor's office, to be printed and sold. 28. The Queen goes to the opera, and is much applauded. 29. Manifesto proposed by M. Condorcet, to acquaint the world with the sentiments of the French nation, if it should be forced into war. 31. Decreed, that the ceremonies of New-year's day shall ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... the pen of Addison, was an opera called "Rosamond," which having but indifferent success, he next assisted Steele in his play of "The Tender Husband;" for which the author surprised him by a dedication, openly to avow ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... tempest-whirl of spray;—ghost-white and like a ghost she came, for her smoke-stacks exhaled no visible smoke—the wind devoured it! The excitement on shore became wild;—men shouted themselves hoarse; women laughed and cried. Every telescope and opera-glass was directed upon the coming apparition; all wondered how the pilot kept his feet; all marvelled at the madness ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... 'fore sunrise, when the blue mist was hangin' round the mountain tops an' in among the trees. It was like a fairy dream. I listened t' th' orchestra of the birds—the woodthrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager an' the rest of the thrillin' songsters—and the music was more delicious 'n any opera I've heard in London an' Paris. I wasted a full hour watchin' a fool centipede that had gotten himself tangled in a spider's web—watched th' manoeuvres of that spider for a ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... convention was held in Boyd's Opera House, Omaha, September 26, 27, 28. The Bee was ironical and contemptuous in its treatment, heading its report "Mad Anthony's Raid." The Herald, under control of a young son of U. S. Senator Hitchcock, was vulgar and abusive, referring to the question ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... children she had sent a bundle of cast-off party dresses; and the tears ran down Fanny's cheeks as she described the appearance of the elder Hobbs, who came to church with a soiled pink silk skirt, her black, tattered petticoat hanging down below and one of Lucy's opera hoods upon ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... don a character in early youth as others don a mask before going to an opera ball. They select it not without some care, being guided in their choice by the opinion they have formed of the world's mind and manner of proceeding. In the privacy of the dressing-room, the candles being lighted and the mirror ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... night in La Scala. Rossini's opera of William Tell was advertised, and as we had visited so lately the scene where that glorious historical drama was enacted, we went to see it represented in sound. It is a grand subject, which in the hands of a powerful composer, might be made very ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... troupe is ill, and I wish to obtain some one to supply her place-but I suppose you are unacquainted with any opera?" ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... facts of his sleep, his life when awake and his former sleeps. Richet attests how somnambules recall with a luxury of detail scenes in which they have taken part and places they have visited long ago. M——, one of his somnambules, sings the air of the second act of the opera "L'Africaine" when she is asleep, but can not remember a note of it ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... sideways, he had the empty funnel of an old auto horn with which to magnify his voice and make the forest ring with his sonorous cries for help. And if the help did not come, he had still one cylinder of an old opera glass, with the lens of which he could ignite a dried leaf by day or observe the guiding stars by night. And if there were no dried leaves he had his crumpled piece of tissue paper. And if the stars did not shine, he had a rag for extracting ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... American, played on the mouth-organ. John's mind continually went back to the great republic overseas, so safe and so sane. While he was listening to the thin tinkle in the dark and snowy trench his friends were going to the great opera house in New York to hear "Aida" or "Lohengrin" maybe. And yet he would not have been back there. The wish did not occur to him. Through the dark and the snow he saw the golden hair and the deep blue eyes of Julie Lannes float before him, and it pleased him too to think that he ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... le cose cosi ben disposte, che durara poca fattica in ottener quel tanto si desidera per Sua Beatitudine, anzi havera piu presto da ringratiar quella Maesta Christianissima di cosi buona et sant' opera, ha fatto far, che da durare molta fatica in persuaderli l' unione con la Santa Chiesa Romana (Cusano to the Emperor, Rome, Sept. 6). Sereno (Comment. della guerra di Cipro, p. 329) understands the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... dodged a neighbour's butler who was brought out by the shouts, and got away. He had only just got into the house, for there were only some small silver things taken. It was like a scene from a comic opera when we got back, as our host and hostess with old fashioned lamps went along their line of white-robed servants. These were all dying to speak at once, but had each to wait his turn and give his account of how the thief ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... many patients, so the pleasure of listening to it should be afforded at frequent intervals. Patients should be encouraged to absorb themselves in it. It is often possible to take insane people to opera, musical comedy, or concert. Vocal and instrumental practice at suitable intervals is of great value in fixing the attention, filling the mind with desirable thoughts and memories, and allaying irritability. Drawing and painting are of service when within the number of the patient's accomplishments. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... my mother—this will surprise many in the case of so sensible a woman—took us to the theatre. Two of our relatives, Frau Amalie Beer and our beloved Moritz von Oppenfeld, subscribed for boxes in the opera-house, and when they did not use them, which often happened, sent ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rises, disclosing the ushers of the theater still moving up and down the aisles. Cries of "Program!" "Program!" are heard. There is a buzz of brilliant conversation, illuminated with flashes of opera glasses and the ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... Octavius one evening in early February, "as if the Grits were getting a little anxious about South Fox—high time, too. I see Cruickshank is down to speak at Clayfield on the seventh, and Tellier is to be here for the big meeting at the opera ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... that is like a challenge, and with sophisticated feminine art she had contrived that the dinner gown she chose for that evening should sound the keynote of her personality like a leitmotif in an opera. The costume was a creation of white satin, the folds caught here and there with strings of pearls. There was a single large rose of pink velvet among the draperies of the skirt; a looped girdle of blue velvet was the only other splash ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... our friend, but even more to the disgust of the generals of the Russian army and to the troops, who thus rendered absurd homage and found themselves taking part in something like a bit of comic opera. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Wentworths, when they came over to see her, were somewhat bewildered by the obtrusive distribution of her wardrobe. There were India shawls suspended, curtain-wise, in the parlor door, and curious fabrics, corresponding to Gertrude's metaphysical vision of an opera-cloak, tumbled about in the sitting-places. There were pink silk blinds in the windows, by which the room was strangely bedimmed; and along the chimney-piece was disposed a remarkable band of velvet, covered with coarse, dirty-looking ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... it up when I was a boy. My grandfather was an Irish sailor with such a tremendous voice that a Neapolitan music master brought him out in opera as a buffo. When he had roared his voice away, he went into the chorus. My father was reared in Italy, and looked more Italian than most genuine natives. He had no voice; so he became first accompanist, then chorus master, and ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... worth while to come to a sympathetic understanding of the place of the drama and the opera, to see what they have meant in the education of the race and what is the significance, to us, of the fact of the strong dramatic instinct in childhood. Naturally the subject can only be mentioned here and the suggestion be offered that parents ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... to Paris, and come back mise a la mode, and with a decided taste for spending more money than she has at her bankers'. The beauty of the women's faces, too, as you see them in the streets, the Prado, and at the opera (for I have not yet seen the beau monde at home), is very agreeable. Pretty faces seem to be as plentiful here as gold nuggets in the streets of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... and put them all into a pint bottle. The human voice is rarely heard within its walls save in connexion with corn, or the ambidextrous prestidigitation of the Wizard of the North. In like manner, Drury Lane is conducted now with almost a sole view to the opera and ballet, insomuch that the statue of Shakespeare over the door serves as emphatically to point out his grave as his bust did in the church of Stratford-upon-Avon. How can the profession generally hope to qualify for the Drury ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... went to a few more parties—not many. However, they were gingerly permitted to witness their first play, and later, the same year, were taken to "Lohengrin" at the opera. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the great leader of the Tory party. Gay, as a poet, was respectable, but poor, unfortunate, a hanger on of great people, and miserably paid for his sycophancy. His fame rests on his Fables and his Beggar's Opera. Prior first made himself distinguished by his satire called A City Mouse and a Country Mouse, aimed against Dryden. He was well rewarded by government, and was sent as minister to Paris. Like most of the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... in the translation a few portions on the composition and management of the opera, on the giving of concerts, and on the construction of the piano, thinking that they would be of little interest or practical ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... addition to the comic opera, Tina, at the Adelphi, is a stage representation of "Eve," the writer of "The Letters of Eve" in The Tatler, together with her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... the occasion he now had for it. He therefore had no anxious thoughts to interrupt the pleasures the place he was in afforded in such variety; he was every evening with the baron, either at court, the opera, the comedy, or some other gay scene of entertainment; was introduced to the best company; and his young heart, charm'd with the politeness and gallantry of that nation, and the little vanity to which a person of such ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... French painter, decorated the foyer of the Grand Opera in Paris; is best known as the author of the "Punishment of a Vestal Virgin" and the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... this luxury, for the poor fellahin women have no other means of locomotion than their little feet. These beauties, as we may suppose them to be, since they are masked more closely than society ladies at the Opera ball, wear over their garments a habbarah, a sort of black taffeta sack, which fills with air and swells in the most ungraceful fashion if ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... afford, when two herring-heads were flung out of the window, and he found in each of them a ducat with which he promptly paid his way, not home, but back to Hamburg. At Hamburg, also, Keiser was laying the foundations of German opera on a splendid scale which must have fired Bach's imagination though it never directly influenced his style. On the other hand Keiser's church music was of immense importance in his development. In Celle the famous Hofkapelle brought the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... vividness that was terrible yet exquisite, I saw Karamaneh, my lost love; I saw her first wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak, with her flower-like face and glorious dark eyes raised to me; I saw her in the gauzy Eastern raiment of a slave-girl, and I saw her in the dress ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... were the same lovers now that they were during their honeymoon. In the crowded ballroom, at the opera, in the automobile after the harassing cares of the day, on land or sea, he was always the admiring and devoted attendant, and gave expression to his feelings in a variety of new and interesting ways. It was evident that they had not run counter to the influence of the stars in ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... How he beguiled the way with his learning!—in ecstasies all the time, enjoying everything, animate or inanimate, as you or I would enjoy a new play or a new opera. How I envied him! He was like a man always reading a new and pleasant book. At first the stockmen rode behind, talking about beasts, and horses, and what not—often talking about nothing at all, but riding along utterly without thought, if such a thing could ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... identifying him with the Pope fortune, had paid him small attention. She had been absorbed then in the wretched conclusion of the Foster affair. Derrick Foster had been distressing and annoying her unmercifully. After the warm and delightful friendship of several months, after luncheons and teas, opera and concerts in the greatest harmony, Derrick Foster had had the daring, the impudence, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... an open trunk from which a fur-trimmed pale pink opera cloak hung carelessly. Beside the trunk in an attitude of homesickness huddled the young woman, hair dishevelled, eyes red. Her dress of green silk, embroidered stockings and beaded slippers looked out of place and at ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... which they tried to cover our nation there still was some life. Czech books were read more than ever, and the life of the national soul expressed itself in the performances in the National Theatre. When we heard about the storm of enthusiasm which greeted the prophecy in Smetana's opera Libusha, we felt suddenly relieved, and we knew that our ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... of Turin is seen in the general survey of the town and its princely environs, particularly on the Moncaliere side. Our principal amusement was derived from Zuchelli's masterly performance at the Opera Buffa. The plot of the piece turned partly on the discomfitures and discontents of a supercilious English dandy, which part this singer performed with an immoveable countenance, which kept us in a roar of laughter, his grave rich toned bass ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... side-curls and shawls, and drove out every afternoon in a barouche with two stout horses and two lean men-servants. Sanchia sometimes accompanied her, stiff and pliant at once, bright-eyed and faintly coloured. She was taken about to parties also, and to the opera—and very often there were parties at the old lady's house— carriage-company, and gentleman in furred coats, who came in hansom cabs. He thought that she had suitors. There was a tall, thin man who came very often in the afternoons. He was sallow ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... came to the kaisership too early; was a thin violent creature, sensible to the charms and horrors of created objects; and had terrible rhinoceros ziskas and unruly horned cattle to drive. He was one of the worst kaisers ever known—could have done Opera Singing much better—and a sad sight to Bohemia. Let us leave him there: he was never actual Elector of Brandenburg, having given it up in time; never did any ill to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... too absurd, to see the dying scene of Romeo and Juliet sung out in an opera!" remarked Lawrence Egerton, one morning; "all the music of the spheres could not have made that scene, last night, otherwise than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... score, Algarotti has become a wearisome literary man to modern readers: one of those half-remembered men; whose books seem to claim a reading, and do not repay it you when given. Treatises, of a serious nature, ON THE OPERA; setting forth, in earnest, the potential "moral uses" of the Opera, and dedicated to Chatham; Neutonianismo per le Donne (Astronomy for Ladies): the mere Titles of such things are fatally sufficient to us; and we cannot, without effort, nor with it, recall the brilliancy ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... went on, unheedingly, but breaking off suddenly: "Now if I were like Arobin-you remember Alcee Arobin and that story of the consul's wife at Biloxi?" And he related the story of Alcee Arobin and the consul's wife; and another about the tenor of the French Opera, who received letters which should never have been written; and still other stories, grave and gay, till Mrs. Pontellier and her possible propensity for taking young men seriously ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... deposited his charge at Morley's Hotel, in Cockspur Street, and extorted from them an extra shilling, in consideration of their evident rustication, he bent his course towards the Opera House; for clouds were gathering, and, with the favour of Providence, there seemed a chance about midnight of picking up some helpless beau, or desperate cabless dandy, the choicest victim, in a midnight shower, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... On the last night they put on the Jinks proper, a great spectacle in praise of the forest with poetic words, music and effects done by the club. In late years this has been practically a masque or an opera. It cost about $10,000. It took the spare time of scores of men for weeks; yet these 750 business men, professional men, artists, newspaper workers, struggled for the honor of helping out on the Jinks; and the whole thing was done naturally and with reverence. It would ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... only a gentleman and a young girl, who stood in the middle of the floor, consulting their guide-book; but when he had taken a few steps forward, he saw a lady come from the far end and seat herself to look at the ceiling through an opera-glass. It was Mrs. Baske, and he approached whilst she was still intent on the frescoes. The pausing of his footstep close to her caused her to put down the glass and regard him. Mallard noticed the sudden change from cold remoteness of countenance to pleased recognition. The brightening ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... that no club can imitate, And no throng can ever equal just a few folks near the grate; Though I sometimes like an opera, there's no music quite so sweet As the singing of the neighbors that you're always glad to meet; Oh, I know when they come calling that the fun will soon begin, And I'm happiest those evenings when a ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... seditious title, 'The Rights of Man.' Burke's 'Thoughts on the French Revolution' was advertised by him as 'The Gospel according to St. Burke.' Outside a certain bookseller's shop, Mr. R. C. Christie once saw a book in six duodecimo volumes, bound in dark antique calf, and lettered 'Calvini Opera.' Knowing of no edition of the works of Calvin in that form, Mr. Christie took down a volume, and found it was 'Faublas!' It was the original edition in thirteen parts, with the seventeen engravings, and was so lettered, no doubt, by its former owner to ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Garibaldi; philosophers like Krause, Fichte, and John Locke; patriots like Washington and Mazzini; writers like Walter Scott, Voltaire, Steele, Lessing, Tolstoi; poets like Goethe, Burns, Byron, Kipling, Pike; musicians like Haydn and Mozart—whose opera, The Magic Flute, has a Masonic motif; masters of drama like Forrest and Edwin Booth; editors such as Bowles, Prentice, Childs, Grady; ministers of many communions, from Bishop Potter to Robert Collyer; statesmen, philanthropists, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... know about war, Jeff? We killed our first Yankee before we were seventeen, and now they fight behind guns located six miles away by squinting through double-decker opera glasses. War, ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... age about fifty-seven (even that point has never been ascertained); in height about five feet six inches; in weight, nearly thirteen stone; with a chest that the celebrated Leitch himself might envy; an arm that was like an opera-dancer's leg; a stomach so elastic that it would accommodate itself to any given or stolen quantity of food; a great aptitude for strong liquors; a considerable skill in singing chansons de table of not the most delicate kind; he was a lover of jokes, of which ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had gone too far when his mother spoke like that. He ceased abruptly and dashed into the house, as if to cut himself off from temptation to transgress further. The next moment they heard him whistling a comic opera air ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... herself from their search. They follow her from town to country, from the country to the town. They trace her from the breakfast-table to the Park, from the Park to the dinner-table, from thence to the Opera or the ball, and from her boudoir to her bed. They trace her every where. She may make as many doubles as a hare, but they are all in vain; it is impossible to escape pursuit; and yet the introduction of female names into the daily ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... opera refined and extended the illusion that she had been transported out of the world by some occult agency. The wonderful creature that had taken her up out of her abandoned misery before the sordid shop-shutter appeared now in a fairy costume glittering ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... inwardly abused the opera they were performing! It was called "Le Diable;" and to me it appeared as though the fiend in question had no tail—or rather, no end—to that appendage, so long did the time seem. Far be it from me to despise the arts; I admire them in every shape, except ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... no company. I took la bella to the Duomo and Annunciata, to the Cafe, to the Opera, to the village Festa, to the Public Garden, to the Day Theatre, to the Marionetti. The pretty little one was charmed with all she saw. She learnt Italian - heavens! miraculously! Was mistress quite forgetful of that dream? I asked Carolina sometimes. Nearly, ...
— To be Read at Dusk • Charles Dickens
... something is. To save yourself from being thought guilty of a big crime you are willing to incur suspicion of a small one. It's a wise move, my boy, but look out! No tricks with me or my friendship may not hold. Meantime, I cash this check to-morrow." And he swung away through the night with a grand-opera selection ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... fairies sat down at the tables, in pleasant little parties of four and six, while the band played the most admired fairy opera airs. But before the banquet was through, I am sadly afraid some of the gay young fellows forgot they were in the presence of ladies, they laughed so loud, and talked so much nonsense, and one of them came very near upsetting the table at which ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... regarded the peasants as cunning and rather filthy beasts. They had so many children, and she had no doubt that both boys and girls were full of vice. Nevertheless they were always invited to the manor house on Midsummer day and on the general's birthday, to play the part of the chorus of grand opera, that is to say, to cheer and dance, and look like the figures in ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... that having him sent two or three hundred miles away from me; with some young master to take care of, is the way to make up to me what I have gone through for him? why I used to deny myself every thing in the world, in order to save money to buy him smart cloaths, and let him go to the Opera, and Ranelagh, and such sort of places, that he might keep himself in fortune's way! and now you see the end of it! here he is, in a little shabby room up two pairs of stairs, with not one of the great folks coming near him, to see if he's so much ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... at a concert presided over by the Duke of Montebello, and this led to other profitable engagements. But the great opportunity of his life came to him in Bologna. The people had thronged to the opera house to hear Malibran. She had disappointed them, and they were in no mood to be lenient to the unknown violinist who had the temerity to try ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... 1540 oratorio was first composed, followed by opera in 1594. During this period, instrumental music began to be used in the churches; and the violin was brought by the celebrated Amati family to a beauty of form, and sweetness of ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... friend, the actor and playwright William Hatchett, and performed at the Haymarket.[13] Three years later she joined with him to produce an adaptation of Fielding's "Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great" on the model of Gay's popular "Beggar's Opera." The "Opera of Operas" follows its original closely with a number of condensations and omissions. Almost the only additions made by the collaborators were the short lyrics, which were set to music by the ingenious Mr. Frederick Lampe.[14] The Hatchett-Haywood ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... if I like," she said sadly. "You seem so indifferent, Irgens! Yes, I admit I should like to go to the opera, but—Where are you going this evening? I am just like a compass-needle now: I oscillate, I may even swing all the way round, but I hark constantly back to one point—I point continually in one direction. It is you ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... speech, his impressions of the House of Commons; of music, Barbara, Courtier, the river. He told her of his health, and described his days down by the sea. She, as ever, spoke little of herself, persuaded that it could not interest even him; but she described a visit to the opera; and how she had found a picture in the National Gallery which reminded her of him. To all these trivial things and countless others, the tone of their voices—soft, almost murmuring, with a sort of delighted gentleness—gave a high, sweet importance, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... right here in this shack. It was acting itself to me up there in that ruined shack across the river, when you handed me your talk of Murray's purpose, only I guess I wasn't sitting in the front row, and hadn't the opera glasses to see with. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... to what the others said, and his eyes thanked them for some expression of loyalty or confidence, he saw himself in dreams as bright as an absinthe drinker's, back in his beloved Paris: in the Champs-Elysees behind fine horses, lolling from a silk box at the opera, dealing baccarat at the jockey Club, or playing host to some beautiful woman of the hour, in the new home he would establish for her in the discreet and leafy borders of ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... ride in the Academy, but must dance and fence in my own lodgings. Lord Albemarle [the British ambassador] is come from Fontainebleau. I have very good reason to be pleased with the reception I met with. The best amusement for strangers in Paris is the Opera, and the next is the playhouse. The theatre is a school to acquire the French language, for which reason I frequent it more ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... was a boy I illustrated one of his first stories. He also introduced me behind the scenes at the old Theatre Royal. I recollect my boyish delight when one day I was on the stage during the rehearsal of the Italian opera. Shall I ever forget that treat? It was much greater in my eyes than the real performance later on. If my memory serves, "Don Giovanni" was the opera. One of the principals was suddenly taken ill, and this rehearsal was called ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... a whole year, and sometimes even longer, to polish a large telescope lens. Without this magnifying agency we should have no astronomy, and fewer scientific discoveries than we now have. The glasses people wear all have to be ground and polished in much the same fashion; opera glasses, magic lanterns, and every contrivance for bringing distant objects nearer or making them larger are dependent for their power ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... pantomime in England, which he introduced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in April, 1716, and in which, under the stage name of Lun, he played the part of Harlequin. At Lincoln's Inn Fields, January 29, 1728, he produced 'The Beggar's Opera', which, after being refused at Drury Lane, made "Gay 'rich', and Rich 'gay'." "Great Faustus" probably alludes to the war between the two theatres, and the rival productions of 'Harlequin Dr. Faustus' at ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... for appearing at a private concert a famous opera singer has been paid in food, including sixty eggs. The custom is not unknown to some of our own music-hall artistes, who however are usually more than content ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... a charming little Theatre also at the back of the Hotel-de-Ville, where occasional representations by good Parisian companies are given. The decorations are by the hand of one of the artists who decorated the Grand Opera in Paris. He happened to be at Montbeliard, and, taking a kindly interest in the town, offered to do it for a nominal price. Years passed and the promise was forgotten, but, on being reminded of it, the artist, with true French chivalry, redeemed his word, and the decorations ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... he could have said that where three men had failed to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say that? Oh, no, he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college president. Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a conspirator in a comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... having fine chimes of bells. Here the vice chancellor listens to a sermon every Sunday afternoon in term-time. Formerly, on these occasions, the "heads and doctors" of the university sat in an enclosed gallery built like a sort of gigantic opera-box, and profanely called the "Golgotha." A huge pulpit faced them on the other end of the church, and the centre formed a sort of pit. Modern improvements have, however, swept this away, replacing it ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... there was fresh going on." He found a new race of engineers springing up on all hands—men who knew him not; and his London journeys gradually ceased to yield him pleasure. A friend used to take him to the opera, but by the end of the first act, he was generally in a profound slumber. Yet on one occasion he enjoyed a visit to the Haymarket with a party of friends on his birthday, to see T. P. Cooke, in "Black-eyed Susan;"—if ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... In the Italian opera-houses of London there have long prevailed managerial ordinances touching the style of dress to be assumed by the patrons of those establishments; the British playgoer, however, attending histrionic performances in his native tongue has been ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... but regard it as great good fortune when Count Algarotti proposed to me to take the second place as singer in Berlin; this promised to be more profitable, as the count carelessly offered Taliazuchi a place in the opera troupe as writer. So I left my beautiful Italy; I left you to amass gold in this cold north. And now, I no longer repent; I rejoice! I have found you again—you, the beloved of my youth—you, my youth itself. Oh, Heaven! never will I forget the day when ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the power-house is right by the Old Swimming-hole above the dam. The meeting-house, where we attended Sabbath-school, and marveled at the Greek temple frescoed on the wall behind the pulpit, is now a church with a big organ, and stained-glass windows, and folding opera-chairs on a slanting floor. There isn't any "Amen Corner," any more, and in these calm and well-bred times nobody ever gets ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... gurgled out this morning; what's the good of mine, as it stands now, to its owner or to anybody else, I should like to know, except the dear old Progenitor? A mere bit of cracked blue china, a fanciful air from a comic opera, masquerading in black and white as a piece of sacred music! What good am I to anyone on earth but the Progenitor (God bless him!), and when he's gone, dear old fellow, what on earth shall I have left to live for. A selfish blank, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... when others help us and we happen to find pleasure therein, we answer to very difficult demands upon the imagination. In the opera the deviation from reality is so powerful that it seems silly to one unaccustomed to it. But we do not need the unaccustomed person. We need only to imagine the most ordinary scene in an opera, i. e., a declaration of love, sung; an aria ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... singing, wild gipsy melodies. Illumination, moonlight, and evening glow, interspersed with torches through the wood; the whole might have been served, unaltered, as a great scenic effect in a romantic opera. Beside me sat the whitebearded Archbishop of Gran, primate of Hungary, in a black silk talar, with a red cape; on the other side a very amiable and elegant general of cavalry, Prince Liechtenstein. You see, the painting was rich in contrasts. Then we rode ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... them; and not to attend to Beethoven's conducting-stick. Moreover, it should be observed, that conducting a symphony, an overture, or any other composition whose movements remain continual, vary little, and contain few nice gradations, is child's play in comparison with conducting an opera, or like work, where there are recitatives, airs, and numerous orchestral designs preceded by ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... gown of mine Zora was simply magnificent. Her form is perfect, her height is regal, her skin is satin, and my jewels found a resting place at last. Jewels, you know, dear, were never meant for white folk. I was tempted to take her to the box at the opera and let New York break its ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the following twenty lines were struck off one night after Lord Byron's return from the Opera, and sent the next morning to the printer. The date of the letter to Dallas, with which the lines were enclosed, suggests that the representation which provoked the outburst was that of 'I Villegiatori Rezzani,' ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... he looked much more distressed than rejoiced as he lumbered from his table to grasp the outstretched hand of a classmate. The opera-hat of this Mr. Richard Giddings was cocked at a rakish angle, his blue eye twinkled good cheer and youthful hilarity, and his ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... room. She kept her seat on the piano-stool, the centre of the group, as a queen of the ballet sits on a painted throne, flashing her eyes from one to the other, wheeling about to dash off an air from some unknown opera—unknown to those who listened— laying her lighted cigarette on the music-rack as she played, and whirling back again to tell some anecdote of the composer who wrote it, or some incident connected with its production ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he executed a panel in that palace, for which reason he was afterwards commissioned to do two in the Duomo and a Madonna with the child in her arms in a most beautiful attitude, above the door of the opera of that building. In this picture some angels which are holding up a standard in the air, are flying and looking down on saints below them, who are surrounding Our Lady, forming a very beautiful and decorative ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... Nor dares he, though he were a duke, Offend me with the least rebuke. Proceed we to your preaching [5] next! How nice you split the hardest text! How your superior learning shines Above our neighbouring dull divines! At Beggar's Opera not so full pit Is seen as when you mount our pulpit. Consider now your conversation: Regardful of your age and station, You ne'er were known by passion stirr'd To give the least offensive word: But still, whene'er you silence break, Watch every syllable ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... provinces, and you drop a part of Paris with him. Drop him in Senegambia, and in three days he will give you an omelette soufflee, or a pate de foie gras, served by the neatest of Senegambian filles, whom he will call mademoiselle. In three weeks he will give you an opera. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... charity, and lived on the leavings which restaurant-keepers gave him. There was only one thing that he would spend money on; that was music. He was passionately fond of music, and for years was a familiar figure in the lobby of the Academy of Music during the opera season. He would go there early in the evening, and beg people to pay his way in. If he didn't find a philanthropist he would buy a ticket himself, but he never gave up hope until he knew ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... Formerly he had whipped the social trout-stream with great success. As the Marquis he had composed some pretty odes, had led the German at Mrs. de Folly's assembly, had driven to Hempstead with the Coaching Club, and had been seen in Mrs. Castor's box at the opera. As the Baron Tulitz, he had attended the races, and had been a frequenter of all the great gaming resorts. The newspapers called him a "plunger," and a story went the rounds, in which he was represented to have wrecked a pool-seller, who thereupon committed suicide. The Baron always ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... fortunate event for Meilhac; others assert that Halevy reaped a great profit by the union. Be this as it may, a great number of plays-drama, comedy, farce, opera, operetta and ballet—were jointly produced, as is shown by the title-pages of two score or more of their pieces. When Ludovic Halevy was a candidate for L'Academie—he entered that glorious body in 1884—the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to his vomit; when the sun That rose in splendour, was alive, and moved 365 In exultation with a living pomp Of clouds—his glory's natural retinue— Hath dropped all functions by the gods bestowed, And, turned into a gewgaw, a machine, Sets like an Opera phantom. Thus, O Friend! 370 Through times of honour and through times of shame Descending, have I faithfully retraced The perturbations of a youthful mind Under a long-lived storm of great events— A story destined for thy ear, who now, 375 Among the fallen of nations, dost abide Where ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... much money by the fight. A theatre in Chicago may he willingly control, in which light opera ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Digby, visibly to please her, uttered a very handsome praise of "Cecilia," specially dwelling on the chapter of the Opera Rehearsal. Her eyes followed his every movement. I perceived but too well the growing interest, and pitied the poor lady were her feelings to be deeply engaged; for I believed he turned his melancholy ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... But on the pretty vine-clad verandas, the heads of families sat sewing or reading and smoking, with the little ones tumbling about the grass. On one veranda a gramophone, the first in the town, screeched out a strain from a Grand Opera to the wonder and admiration of all the neighbours. Helen moved along the street more lonely than ever in the midst of all this home happiness. She passed a little cottage where a young man and woman were tying up a rose vine, beaten down by recent rains. Madame had told her ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... there he was in a moment, headache and all, in an attitude as large and inspired as the boldest gesture antiquity has committed to marble—he had even the advantage in stature over most of the sculptured forms of Greece. But a double opera-glass at his eye "spoiled the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... what a peculiar state of affairs had come upon the stage—here, with an ambush lying in wait before him, this man could step blithely along, swinging his aluminum bucket and softly warbling one of the most recent hits from a comic opera—Jack had himself heard the song on the boards of a great metropolitan theatre in New York—had even caught himself whistling the catchy air more than a few ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... not ask what prompts him. That telegraph is a social mystery; no observer can report its effects. Of many extraordinary instances thereof, one may suffice: The assassination of the Duc de Berry, which occurred at the Opera-house, was related within ten minutes in the Ile-Saint-Louis. Thus the opinion of the 6th of the line as to its quartermaster filtered through society the night on which he gave ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... The instant center was probably first recognized by Jean Bernoulli (1667-1748) in his "De Centro Spontaneo Rotationis" (Johannis Bernoulli ... Opera Omnia ..., Lausanne, ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson |
