"Opera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the celebrated composer, who declares that he once saw a pigeon which could distinguish a particular air. Lockman was visiting a Mr. Lee in Cheshire, whose daughter was a fine pianist, "and whenever she played the air of Speri si from Handel's opera of 'Admetus,' a pigeon would descend from an adjacent dovecot to the window of the room where she sat, 'and listen to the air apparently with the most pleasing emotions,' always returning to the dovecot immediately the air was finished. But it was only this one air that would induce the bird to ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... removing of all the defects formerly enumerate, except the last, and of the active part also of the last (which is the designation of writers), are opera basilica; towards which the endeavours of a private man may be but as an image in a crossway, that may point at the way, but cannot go it. But the inducing part of the latter (which is the survey of learning) may be set forward ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... says "there is a serious intention in the play," or Barrett Wendell who says: "like modern comic opera, such essentially lyric work as this has no profound meaning; its object is just to delight, to amuse; whoever searches for significance in ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... commodious lodgings in Russell Square awaited him, and Sir Victor "went in" for domestic felicity in the parish of Bloomsbury, "on the quiet." Very much "on the quiet" no theatre going, no opera, no visitors, and big Captain Jack Erroll, of the Second Grenadiers, his only guest. Four months of this sort of thing, and then—and then ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Tiny. "She's perfectly beautiful, 'Lena, perfectly. Mamma took her with us one night to the opera, and so many people asked her who the beautiful American was. She has grown quite tall, and is wonderfully stylish. Colonel Belmont has simply showered money on her since he went over, and she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Hamilton, Mr. Bainbridge and daughter, with young Nicol Milne and the Fergusons, dined here. Miss Haig sings Italian music better than any person I ever heard out of the Opera-house. But I am neither a judge nor admirer of the science. I do not know exactly what is aimed at, and therefore cannot tell what is attained. Had a letter from Colin Mackenzie, who has proposed himself ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... away, and hurrying on to the house. I heard him laugh lightly, and hum an opera-air as he rode off, sitting his horse with the easy seat of a thorough horseman. He would never set up a carriage as long as he could ride like that. I watched him out of sight, and then went in ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... pictures and records of architecture, the legacy of St. Mark to St. George. Two young artists were brought into his circle, during that winter—both Venetians, and both singularly interesting men: Giacomo Boni, now a celebrated antiquary, then capo d'opera of the Ducal Palace, and doing his best to preserve, instead of "restoring," the ancient sculptures; and Angelo Alessandri, a painter of more than usual seriousness of aim and sympathy with the fine qualities of ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... hauteur and disdain that he took for aristocratic behaviour and fashionable manners, and he thought all the more of her on that account. This busy man taxed his ingenuity to please them, and he sometimes succeeded. He got them cards for fashionable functions and boxes at the Opera. He furnished Mademoiselle Clarence with several opportunities of appearing to great advantage and in particular at a garden party which, although given by a Minister, was regarded as really ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... For him war is a martyrdom which he embraces with a fierce gladness. His spirit is well illustrated by an incident that happened the other day in Paris. A descendant of Racine, a well-known figure at the opera, was travelling in the Metro when he spotted a poilu with a string of ten medals on his breast. The old aristocrat went over to the soldier and apologised for speaking to him. "But," he said, "I have never seen any poilu with so many decorations. You ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... herself could name, seeming to hail from the borderland of Italy and France, a daughter of the Riviera, she had strayed and tumbled through a youth of which she would speak in moments of expansion. I, however, need say nothing of it. When I saw her first she was playing a small part in a light opera at Forstadt. A few weeks later she had assumed leading roles, and was the idol of the young men. She was then about twenty-three, tall, dark, of full figure, doomed to a brevity of beauty, but at the moment ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... don't. Look there, in front of those trees, there's an Englishman with a white umbrella, and a lady with a parasol. Oh, I say, what a shame; she's using an opera-glass—and you said we were coming up into ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... quiet downtown streets he met couples strolling by. A tall thin lad and a buxom girl went into a cheap apartment building laughing gaily to themselves, and Roger thought of Laura. A group of young Italians passed, humming "Trovatore," and it put him in mind of the time when he had ushered at the opera. Would Laura's young man be willing to usher? More like him to tango down ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... 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, said la bella - almost. ...
— To be Read at Dusk • Charles Dickens
... who could astound his elders with wonderfully accurate silhouettes, continued to surprise them in other ways. His memory was no less amazing than his draughtsmanship. When seven years of age, he was taken to the opera and witnessed Robert le Diable. On returning home ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... French crown was the Duc de Berry. If he died without a son the elder Bourbon line was bound to become extinct as a reigning house. On the night of February 13, Louvel attacked the Duc de Berry at the entrance of the opera house and plunged a knife into his heart. The Duchess was covered with her husband's blood. That night Duc de Berry died beseeching forgiveness for the man who had killed him. King Louis XVIII. himself closed the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... never considered either dull or stupid by competent judges; but, quite the contrary—a sensible, well-informed, gentlemanly personage. But, then, he had no great friends, no patrician weaknesses; he knew nothing about racing, or betting, or opera-dancers, or slang in general. In short, he seemed flat and insipid to Bab, who had been compared to the beautiful Lady Mary Manvers by the soft and persuasive tongue of Lady Mary Manvers's dear friend. Yet, in her secret heart of hearts, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... 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
... the lively opera of Rosamond. This piece was ill set to music, and therefore failed on the stage, but it completely succeeded in print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. The smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... splendid!' continued Geraldine. 'We went to the theatre or the opera every night, and lived on the fat of the land in the best hotel in Europe, and saw everything—even the Tower and the Mint and the Thames Tunnel and the Tate Gallery. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... on him that she wished as much as possible to dispense with state and show on this occasion, the indefatigable old man had been at the trouble and expense of erecting a theatre, and bringing down from Paris the whole of the Opera Comique to play before her, and thus increase the gaiety of the single evening ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... year 1691, as an advertisement to King Arthur, a dramatic opera, Dryden printed a catalogue of his "plays and poems in quarto," in order to prevent future mis-ascriptions. The catalogue comprises ten poems, but no Essay on satire. The publisher of King ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... she made no reply. Her head drooped slightly, as if she were considering. But the moment he put his arms about her they began to talk, both at once, as people do in an opera. The instant avowal brought out a flood of trivial admissions. Hedger confessed his crime, was reproached and forgiven, and now Eden knew what it was in his look that she had found so ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... "the people here are real kind to me; they hardly ever let me feel myself alone. We make up little parties, you know, picnics and excursions. And then, of course, there is the Opera and the Symphony Concerts, and the subscription dances. The dear old king has been doing a good deal this winter, too; and I must say the Embassy folks have been most thoughtful, so far as I am concerned. No, it would ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... division of General Clinchamp marched down on the Rue Faubourg St. Honore, came out upon the Boulevard and took possession of the Madeleine and the Grand Opera House. While these operations had been carried on the Communists, batteries on Montmartre had thrown shells over the whole area occupied by the troops, while Mont Valerien and the other batteries facing the western side maintained a heavy ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... price, gifts so little known among my equals, the gifts of freedom and true pleasure. I should sup gaily at the head of their long table; I should join in the chorus of some rustic song and I should dance in the barn more merrily than at a ball in the Opera House. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Greek and Latin are also occasionally used indiscriminately with the Teutonic synonymes, for the sake of variety or otherwise. Thus the generic word spiel (play), is formed into lustspiel (comedy), trauerspiel (tragedy), sing-spiel (opera), schauspiel (drama); but the Germans also use tragoedie, komoedie, opera and drama. In the text, the author proposes, for the sake of distinction, to give the name of lustspiel to the New Comedy, to distinguish it from the old; but having only the single term comedy ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... mellowing sweetness. To Courtlandt it resembled, as no other sound, the note of a muffled Burmese gong, struck in the dim incensed cavern of a temple. A Burmese gong: briefly and magically the stage, the audience, the amazing gleam and scintillation of the Opera, faded. He heard only the voice and saw only the purple shadows in the temple at Rangoon, the oriental sunset splashing the golden dome, the wavering lights of the dripping candles, the dead flowers, the kneeling devotees, the yellow-robed priests, the tatters of gold-leaf, fresh and old, upon ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Carlyle. "Hadn't you better have your hair curled, and your coat tails lined with white satin, and a gold opera-glass, and a cocked hat?" retorted she. "My gracious me! A fine new cap to go to their mess of a concert in, after paying ten shillings for the tickets! The world's coming ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to his farm, near Tinley Lodge, and sometimes for special recreation to the English Opera, together with his wife and members of the family, always finding time for work ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... to make the new act a success; he procured a clean tablecloth, and napkin, a crush hat and black opera coat (both second-hand) were purchased for the Missing Link. A table, a chair, crockery, edibles, a bottle of beer, a walking stick, and an eyeglass were the rest ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... wait down in the lobby," she said when I had placed the opera-glasses and the programme on the edge of her box and ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... you do or not: it is a brilliant position. He has rank, reputation, high office; all he wants is money, and that you will give him. Alas! I have no prospect so bright. I have no fortune, and I fear my face will never buy a title, an opera-box, and a house in Grosvenor Square. I wish I ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... social favorite on both sides of the river. It developed that he could sing quite amazingly. His voice was high-pitched, but there was power and fire in it. He sang easily and he loved to sing. His songs were the light-opera favorites, the fame of which reached the border from New York and London, and even Vienna. And when there was difficulty about getting the accompaniments played he took his place unaffectedly at the piano and ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... flights of stairs, with a cup of tea for sole refreshment and music or conversation for sole amusement, one will find some of the pleasantest society in Paris. You do not get champagne and boned turkey and the German, but you hear sometimes a little music, such as one pays untold gold to hear at the opera, or a fragment of declamation by some noted elocutionist, or a new poem fresh from the pen of some celebrated writer. And you have always conversation; that is to say, the wit and sparkle of the wittiest and brightest nation on the face of the earth. In a world that is becoming more and more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... was now startled. She turned around—listened. Claudia was a most fastidious connoisseur of music, and she recognized in this performer an artiste of the highest order. Claudia had heard such music as this only from the best opera ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... opera, a few nights since, I saw in a private box a benevolent-looking gentleman of middle age, evidently well-born and accustomed to wealth. He was accompanied by a lady in elegant mourning,—a lady of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... variations of strength with which they are sounded and sung, but in respect of the changes of key, the changes of time, the changes of timbre of the voice, and the many other modifications of expression. While between the old monotonous dance-chant and a grand opera of our own day, with its endless orchestral complexities and vocal combinations, the contrast in heterogeneity is so extreme that it seems scarcely credible that the one should have been the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... accusation of indirectly seeking interviews with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and Will had become very hungry for the vision of a certain form and the sound of a certain voice. Nothing, had done instead—not the opera, or the converse of zealous politicians, or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of his new ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... came out of the bedroom, and wrapped the tall young figure in a long white opera-cloak; and then they all went down together to the front verandah, where the jampans waited with the brown, bare-legged runners in their smart grey ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the Prophete. M. ISNARDON as Des Grieux, pere, a character that might be operatically nearly related to Germont, pere, in La Traviata, was impressively dramatic, but decidedly disappointing in his one great song, which ought to be a certain encore. It may be true that an opera intended for a small stage does not stand a fair chance of success on a large one, and vice versa, as no doubt the LORD MAYOR's coach provided by DRURIOLANUS SHERIFFUS for the occasion would look absurd on the stage of the Opera Comique, while here when it comes round to the gate to fetch ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... diminutive de "libra"; se usa tambien por pan de una libra; "libreto" es el de una opera; el cuadernito de papel de ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... DRURIOLANUS OPERATICUS, with his successful Drury Lane Race-course, his Provincial Theatre, his Italian Opera, his Paper (not in the House, but his weekly one out of it), his Music-of-the-Future Hall, for which a temporary and limited licence has been granted, will—in a general-dealer kind of way—be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... writer of the day, commenting in a scientific journal on the enchanted lyre which Wheatstone had devised, suggested that it might be used to render musical concerts audible at a distance. Thus an opera performed in a theater might be conveyed through rods to other buildings in the vicinity and there reproduced. This was never accomplished, and it remained for our own times to accomplish this and ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... nam tempus veniet, cum reddita sceptra Parthenopes, fractosque tua sub cuspide reges Ipse canam." Opera ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... frontispiece showing Sanctorius with his dinner on the table before him, in his balanced chair which sunk with him below the level of his banquet-board when he had swallowed a certain number of ounces,—an early foreshadowing of Pettenkofer's chamber and quantitative physiology,—but the "Opera Omnia" of Sanctorius I had never met with, and I fear he had ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "Norma," in which the moon was represented by a round transparent disc, lit from behind by a lantern hanging at the end of a string, whose oscillation revealed by turns first the luminary and then the transparency. This was enough to disgust him for ever with the theatre and the opera, whose motionless choruses, contrasting with the sometimes frantic movement of the music, left him with a memory of an insane and ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... Schmucke to the company as copier of music, a humble calling which requires no small musical knowledge; and Schmucke, acting on Pons' advice, came to an understanding with the chef-de-service at the Opera-Comique, so saving ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... this for between half and three quarters of an hour, till at length I began to grow heartily sick of the performance. It was about as dull a business as the last hour of a comic opera. I could hear buffaloes snorting and moving all round, and see the red-beaked tic birds flying up off their backs, making a kind of hiss as they did so, something like that of the English missel-thrush, but I could not see ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... doubted, then took his opera-glass, recognized her, and, dizzy with violent emotion, sat down ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... on the old Thornbush moon old Herschel with his reflector could see a town-house two hundred feet long, on the Brick Moon young Herschel will be able to see a dab of mortar a foot and a half long, if he wants to. And people without the reflector, with their opera-glasses, will be able to see sufficiently well." And to this they agreed: that eventually there must be two Brick Moons. Indeed, it were better that there should be four, as each must be below the horizon half the time. That is ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... north, and to the northeast of New Rochelle. Long Island, as far as Hempstead, was also included. Altogether I travelled about 1200 miles on foot, not counting the distance traversed on trolleys and railroads. Always armed with opera glasses, I was careful not to use them when anyone was looking, for on the second day of the survey I had been arrested on the charge of being a German spy! I was also arrested on board a train in New Jersey for looking earnestly at a topographic map, then sharply ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... non-topical, but on the other hand they always have a better chance of acceptance. Notions for these cluster about every event or personage that happens to be in the public eye. Suppose we are in April, and the Covent Garden Opera is to open in a month's time. At such a moment editors are naturally susceptible to articles bearing on the subject. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... English Parnassus. One of the great actors and authors of these pieces, who published eighteen of these irregular productions, was Andreini, whose name must have the honour of being associated with Milton's, for it was his comedy or opera which threw the first spark of the Paradise Lost into the soul of the epic poet—a circumstance which will hardly be questioned by those who have examined the different schemes and allegorical personages ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the same year, 1501, Michael Angelo began the colossal statue of David, that used to stand in the Piazza and is now in the Academy at Florence. The first contract for this work, signed between Michael Angelo, the Arte della Lana, and the Opera del Duomo, is dated August 16, 1501. It states "That the worthy master, Michael Angelo, son of Lodovico Bonarroti, citizen of Florence, has been chosen to fashion, complete, and perfectly finish the male statue, already rough hewn and called the giant, of nine ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... baptistery, also hard by; but the church to which both campanile and baptistery belonged, has, as the author of "Round about London" so well says, been "utterly restored;" it cannot be uglier than what we sometimes do, but it is quite as ugly. We found an Italian opera company in Biella; peeping through a grating, as many others were doing, we watched the company rehearsing "La forza del destino," which was to be given later in ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... says that 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,' at the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... ran after him. Sumner was then recovering from the blows of the South Carolinian cane or club, and he was pleased to find a young worshipper in the remote Prussian wilderness. They dined together and went to hear "William Tell" at the Opera. Sumner tried to encourage his friend about his difficulties of language: "I came to Berlin," or Rome, or whatever place it was, as he said with his grand air of mastery, "I came to Berlin, unable to say a word in ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... they be presented to his sight. For the pure, the sweet, the graceful, the dignified, he will have thrust before his eyes gaudy, tawdry caricature and grimace; and, worse still, perhaps wholly vulgar obscenities. Were he in his boyhood given a present in the pictorial line, it would be of an Opera-dancer or a race-course, or an abomination of London low life. What "slang" is to the ear, so would it be to the eye; and such is in nine cases out of ten the first education of those aspirants in art, who, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... accompanied them to a coffee-house in the afternoon, from whence they repaired to the opera, and afterwards adjourned to a noted hotel, in order to spend the remaining part of the evening. It was here that our hero secured himself effectually in the footing he had gained in their good graces. He in ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... was well pleased; but he did not like it quite so much when the demon of restoration and renovation invaded his own quarters, such as the Butte des Moulins, and all that densely populated district through which the splendid Avenue de l'Opera now runs. The effect of all this was to drive the workman into the already crowded quarters at the barriers, such as La Gare, St. Lambert, Javel, and Charonne, where, according to the last statistics of the Annuaire, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... of about half a million of dollars, and is capable of containing nearly six thousand persons. To my regret it is now closed. There is another very fine theater here called El Principal, which is open every evening. Last night I went to see the amusing opera of Don Pasquale, by Donizetti, which was quite laudably performed. In fact I go most every night, as I have nothing else to do, and have an excellent seat at my disposal, with which the consul has been so kind as to favor me. The appearance ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... Garden and the London Opera House)," says the Musical critic of The Daily Mail, "is a singer you can watch as well as listen to." The desirability of concealing the faces of some of our principal singers in the past is undoubtedly one of the reasons why England ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... informed that there was once a design of casting into an opera the story of Whittington and his Cat, and that in order to it there had been got together a great quantity of mice; but Mr. Rich, the proprietor of the playhouse, very prudently considered that it would be impossible for the cat to kill them all, and that ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... great orderly buildings. She liked the streets and the crowds. She liked watching the American boys swaggering along, smoking innumerable cigarets and surveying the city with interested, patronizing eyes. And, always, walking briskly along the Rue Royale or the Avenue de l'Opera, or in the garden of the Tuileries where the school-boys played their odd French games, her eyes were searching the faces ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... useful one," that amiable old conventionality 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, that's all. But with HER, ah, how different! With her to live for ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... carelessly. "Not at all. I was just thinking that if Skinner HAD opened that box, and HAD found fire-extinguishers in it, it would have been a fine chance for him to say to Miss Briggs, 'Madam, I am building in this town an opera house, known as Skinner's Opera House. The safety of the people of Kilo demands fire-extinguishers in Skinner's Opera House. I will take those four nickel-plated appliances and install them in my opera house, and allow you ten dollars apiece for them, cash ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... was won in the composition of operas, for which the poet Quinault wrote the words, and he is justly considered to be the founder of French opera. Among Lulli's operas are "Armide," "Isis," "Atys," "Alceste," "Psyche," "Proserpine," and "Bellerophon." The composer did not reach old age, but died in 1687, about fifty-four years old, wealthy and honoured, and a great favourite of Louis XIV., who had made him ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... a great deal, in Dresden," said Godmother when they had gone on their way, "and she's a dear. We must go and see her as she asked us to, and have her down to see us." Godmother spoke as if a very celebrated prima donna at the Metropolitan Opera were no different from any one else one might happen to know. Mary Alice couldn't get ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... Hebrides, Oct. 15), does not tell for much either way. In his Hebrides (Works, ix. 55), he shews his pleasure in singing. 'After supper,' he writes, 'the ladies sung Erse songs, to which I listened, as an English audience to an Italian opera, delighted with the sound of words which I did not understand.' Boswell records (Hebrides, Sept. 28) that another day a lady 'pleased him much, by singing Erse songs, and playing on the guitar.' Johnson himself shews ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the use of this room for visitors,' said the person of the house, screwing up one of her little bony fists, like an opera-glass, and looking through it, with her eyes and her chin in that quaint accordance. 'Always this room for visitors; ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... ye clatter, giant puppet troops, Marshalled in your proudly childish groups, Like the juggler on the opera scene?— Though the sound may please the vulgar ear, Yet the skilful, filled with sadness, jeer Powers so ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... club. He is seen more with the laboring classes,—drivers, boatmen, mechanics, printers,—and I suspect may often be found with publicans and sinners. He is fond of the ferries and of the omnibuses. He is a frequenter of the theatre and of the Italian opera. Alboni makes a deep and lasting impression upon him. It is probably to her ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... and (sometimes, after unlucky friends had dropped to the lowest social depths) even his clothes, this general benefactor was known, in the best society and the worst society alike, as "Dick." He filled the hundred mouths of Rumor with his nickname, in the days when there was an opera in London, as the proprietor of the "Beauty-box." The ladies who occupied the box were all invited under the same circumstances. They enjoyed operatic music; but their husbands and fathers were not rich enough to be able to gratify that expensive taste. Dick's carriage called for ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude's to train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she works, how she studies, how ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... should I find, beshawled, and beflowered, and betoggled in blue satin and white lace, but our old friend —— of Andover concert memory, now become Madame Thingumbob, of European celebrity. She had studied in Italy, come out in Milan, sung there in opera for a whole winter, and also ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the art of today has made no progress in fugue, song, sonata, symphony, quartet, oratorio, opera [who has improved on Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert? Name! name! I say], what is the use of talking about "the average of today being higher"? How higher? You mean more people go to concerts, more people enjoy music than ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... carried as a special privilege by several Russian cavalry regiments. There is nothing that a company of Russians likes better than a spirited performance of their national dances, whether it be high-class Russians at a Russian opera in the Imperial Theatre, or the masses on informal occasions like the present. This soldier, who danced with joy in every fibre, was quite willing to oblige them indefinitely, and seemed to be made of steel springs. He stopped ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... we also realize how meaningless, or how indescribably less full of meaning, the poem would be without its second Part. And yet many, when they speak of Goethe's Faust, mean merely the first Part—or perhaps merely the little episode of Gretchen given in Gounod's opera. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... might be consoled for the vanished lustre of youth by the recollection that he had enjoyed it, and by the present inspiration of an accomplished manhood. There were the Prince and the Princess Protocoli: his Highness a first-rate diplomatist, unrivalled for his management of an opera; and his consort, with a countenance like Cleopatra and a tiara like a constellation, famed alike for her shawls and her snuff. There were Lord and Lady Bloomerly, who were the best friends on earth: my Lord a sportsman, but soft withal, his talk the Jockey Club, filtered through ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... Lemm; "no, that is not in my line; I have not now the liveliness, the play of the imagination, which is needed for an opera; I have lost too much of my power... But if I were still able to do something,—I should be content with a song; of course, I should like to ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... clock, shewing not only the hours but the minutes, is fixed over the front of the stage. A "particular performance" commences at six o'clock, and usually terminates an hour or two before midnight. This evening I saw a little ballet, then two acts of an opera, and afterwards a comedy, the whole concluding with a grand ballet. It is usual on benefit-nights to give a great variety of entertainments in order to attract the public; on these occasions the prices are also ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... And the 3rd is that which is called ANDENA. This is less known among the Latin nations. Its special character is that like silver it is malleable and ductile under a very low degree of heat. In other properties it is intermediate between iron and steel." (Fr. R. Baconis Opera Inedita, 1859, pp. 382-383.) The same passage, apparently, of Avicenna is quoted by Vincent of Beauvais, but with considerable differences. (See Speculum Naturale, VII. ch. lii. lx., and Specul. Doctrinale, XV. ch. lxiii.) The latter author writes Alidena, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... center, the only ideal place for it, where the workingman from the Mission and the merchant from west of Van Ness avenue will find it equally convenient of access. If a smaller number of citizens could raise the money for a municipal opera house, there should be no trouble in getting funds for a building devoted to a far more extensive public benefit, like an art gallery. People generally will want to know why it is that certain things can be given to them for one year, so successfully, and why it should not ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... as a specimen of imperturbability watched, with wonder, across the hushed rattle of roulette at Monte-Carlo; but this quickly became as improbable as any question of a vulgar table d'hote, or a steam-boat deck, or a herd of fellow-pilgrims cicerone-led, or even an opera-box serving, during a performance, for frame of a type observed from the stalls. One placed young gods and goddesses only when one placed them on Olympus, and it met the case, always, that they were of Olympian race, and that they glimmered ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... services, in the narrower sense of the term ( 3), the grave and important ones of the statesman, clergyman and physician, as well as the "frivolous" ones of the opera singer, ballet-dancer and buffoon, unproductive. The labor of none of these can be fixed or incorporated in any particular object.(322)(323) But how strange it is that the labor of a violin-maker is called productive, while that of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... varied and adjusted by inclining the prism to the line of sight. By its means the ordinary image of one component is thrown upon the extraordinary image of the other, and the composite may be viewed by the naked eye, or through a lens of long focus, or through an opera-glass (a telescope is not so good) fitted with a sufficiently long draw-tube to see an object at that short distance with distinctness. Portraits of somewhat different sizes may be combined by placing ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... private carriages; and each carriage has a flock of white-turbaned black footmen and drivers all over it. The vicinity of a lecture-hall looks like a snowstorm,—and makes the lecturer feel like an opera. India has many names, and they are correctly descriptive. It is the Land of Contradictions, the Land of Subtlety and Superstition, the Land of Wealth and Poverty, the Land of Splendor and Desolation, the Land of Plague and Famine, the Land of the Thug and the Poisoner, and of the Meek and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to the theatre or opera, his brandy bottle always making a third for company. Before the performance was half through he was snoring stertorously on the couch which he insisted on having in his box; and, more often than not, was borne to his carriage for the journey home helplessly ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... silvery laugh which made any memory of grand opera seem harsh and jangling. Both men turned to her in surprise. Neither of them could see any cause for mirth in all the ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... looking, mamma, for some lines, that we read the other day, which Mad. de Rosier said she was sure you would like. Can you find them, Matilda? You know Mad. de Rosier said that mamma would like them, because she has been at the opera." ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Opera nvova nella quale se insigna il vero regimento delli huomini & delle do[n]e di qualunqu grado, stato, e condition esser si voglia:, Composta per lo Reuerendissimo Padre Frate Giacobo da Cesole del ordine di predicatori sopra il giuoco delli Scacchi, Intitulata Costvme delli ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... English environment: the form was of course older, but he gave it a specific shape that set the fashion for future times. It had its birth in a business speculation; it was a novelty designed to occupy the Lenten season when the theatres were not available for opera. Like the opera, it supplied narrative and incident and characterization though without scenery or action, and it dealt with biblical history. The history of the oratorio is the history of this loose compromise; it has afforded an attractive flavour of the theatre even to those ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... to her ribbons, if they were As ribbons of a shepherdess should be, She took the hat that she was wont to wear (Bedecked it was with ribbons flying free As ever man in opera might see), And set it on her curls ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... Lecocq and Sullivan. In no respect is the national pride so utterly forgotten as in music. We give to all schools a fair hearing. The great German masters are household words: the national music of every land is welcome. We have been learning to like Italian opera at an insane cost; we have kindly winked at the follies of opera-bouffe; probably nowhere in the world are the intellectual depths of a German symphony and the passionate declamation of an Italian recitative more ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... a favourite with the stage. Early in the present century it was introduced to the Parisian opera by M. Etienne, to the Feydeau by Theaulon's La Clochette: to the Gymnase by La Petite-Lampe of M. Scribe and Melesville, and to teh Panorama Dramatique by MM. Merle, Cartouche and Saintine ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Bingham, Antiq. l. 23, c. 2. "The custom of praying and offering up sacrifice for the faithful departed most evidently appears to have prevailed in the church even from the time of the apostles", says the Protestant bishop Milles, Opera S. Cyrilli. p. 297. "In primitive times" says Palmer "these commemorations (in the mass) were accompanied by prayers for the departed". Origin. Liturg. vol. 2, p. 94. With these Protestant admissions ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... litters or chariots to alight, Arbaces descended from his vehicle, and proceeded to the entrance by which the more distinguished spectators were admitted. His slaves, mingling with the humbler crowd, were stationed by officers who received their tickets (not much unlike our modern Opera ones), in places in the popularia (the seats apportioned to the vulgar). And now, from the spot where Arbaces sat, his eyes scanned the mighty and impatient crowd that filled ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... always be humoured. If you don't humour 'em, they won't work for you. It's a poor tale when the hands won't work. Even with galleys on deck, the life of a sea-cook is not generally thowt an enviable position. Is not a happy one—not a happy one, as the fellah says in the opera. You must humour your cooks. If you stuck 'em in the hold, you'd get no dinner at all—that's the long and the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... than the organ, whilst it is in a perfect sense portable. Pitch your camp in darkness, on the next morning everywhere you will find ground for the legion, but for the fastidious phalanx you need as much choice of ground as for the arena of an opera stage. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Theatres and Opera Houses by Telephone with all the Clubs. On payment of a fixed charge, any member should be able to hear just as much of the piece or Opera as he might require. Something above the price of a Stall to be the maximum charge for one person to hear entire ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... witnesses against himself. But I had better tell you the whole story," said the judge; and with that he began and related the history of the conspiracy entered into by the viscount, the valet, and the ex-opera singer, and overheard by Katie; the discovery and seizure of the eavesdropper; and the abduction and sale ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... hand, that you can't see; and in the sweat of my brow, I must cut down and garner my sheaves; and as I sowed, so must I reap, and grind, and bake, the black and bitter grist of my curse. Don't talk nonsense, little Puddock. Wasn't it Gay that wrote the "Beggar's Opera?" Ay! Why don't you play Macheath? Gay!—Ay—a pleasant fellow, and his poems too. He writes—don't you ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... she used to sing at the Opera-house." Species Ninny. The individuals of this species have an answer for everything. They will tell lies sooner than ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... deambulatione mea, qua peragraui multas alias terras, et perlegi multas vndas, vsque in multorum hoc tempus annorum, et propter insipientes, et discredentes non tacebo. Sed nec propter credentes nec sapientes satis mouebor; tamen vt diuersa Dei opera qui respicere non possunt oculo, saltem legant, vel audiant ex hoc scripto. Pauca vtique vidi horum quae sunt, sed pauca horum ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt |
