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In addition, this weakness brought about by the desire for large congregations had quickly resulted in the adoption of songs borrowed from Italian operas, of low cavatinas and indecent quadrilles played in churches converted to boudoirs and surrendered to stage actors whose voices resounded aloft, their impurity tainting the tones of the holy organ.
He remembered very well; but he also remembered that when he left Naples, Signorina Rossi was laboring away with the most pertinacious assiduity at cavatinas full of runs and scales and fiorituri generally; and he was quite willing to believe that such diligence had met with its due reward.
The Italians have always been born musicians, and in Milan, too, there are plenty of artists. Among the latter, Maestro Ticellini occupied the first place. He had a great deal of talent, wrote charming cavatinas, and his songs were much sought after. He had not composed an opera as yet; and what was the cause of this?
As they turned over their music-books, Alfred, for some minutes, heard only the names of La Tour, Winter, Von Esch, Lanza, Portogallo, Mortellari, Guglielmi, Sacchini, Sarti, Paisiello, pronounced by male and female voices in various tones of ecstasy and of execration. Then there was an eager search for certain favourite duets, trios, and sets of cavatinas.
Human life is a continuous whole, one action leads naturally on to another, without any break, and to attempt to range the actions of men and women under schemes of arias, cavatinas, duets, choruses, each existing for itself and sharply separated from all others, can only render them unintelligible and ridiculous.
Nothing could be plainer than that he sings for the pure pleasure of it an artist deeply in love with his art. Falling a little behind the thrashers in vocal power and technical execution were the catbirds, which sent up their cavatinas from the bushes in the hollow. Their voices lacked the volume and strength of their rivals, yet some of their strains were truly the quintessence of sweetness.
They pour out piercing, unendurably sweet cavatinas above the fragrance of bloom and musky smell of fruit. Singing is in fact the business of the night at Las Uvas as sleeping is for midday.
I then had some fun in reading different parts of my work to him in the form of arias and cavatinas, after which he laughingly declared himself satisfied. Serious reflection, however, aroused my gravest doubts as to the tragic character of the material itself, and to these doubts I had been led, in a manner both sensible and tactful, by Franck.
He was like a creature reverted, a relic of a bygone age, and he was supremely contemptuous of the miserable fin de siècle church showmen who to draw fashionable audiences did not fear to offer the attraction of cavatinas and waltzes rendered on the cathedral organ by manufacturers of profane music, by ballet mongers and comic opera-wrights. "Poor Carhaix!" said Durtal, as he blew out the candle.
The director's receptions were signalized by the performance of insipid cavatinas, and from these, as from his companions' revels in which he would sometimes indulge with the maddest debauchery as if to kill his own thoughts, he would escape to wander in the majestic ruins of the Coliseum and see the magic Italian moonlight shimmer through its broken arches, or stroll on the lonely Campagna till his clothes were drenched with dew.
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