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This superbly written aria provokes from the terrified idolaters a chorus of fear and reproach that is strongly effective. The next act begins with an elaborate aria followed by a love duet of much beauty. A heavily scored priests' march is one of the chief numbers, and like most marches written by the unco' learned, it is a grain of martial melody in a bushel of trumpet figures and preparation.
The opening scene, Louise's garret room in her father's house with the view through the window of her lover's studio; the duet with her lover in which she tells him of her father's refusal to their marriage; and then her promise to run away with him in event of her parent's persisting in his hard-hearted resolution to separate them, seemed to Molly most wonderful and touching; but when the mother came in and berated the lover, Julien, as "a rascal, a starveling, a dissipator"; and when Louise defended him as being "so good, so courageous," and the mother retaliated by calling him the pillar of a wine shop and attempted to beat her daughter, Molly covered her eyes and wept, all unconscious of the amused glances of the occupants of the neighboring box.
He spoke of the customary guests for concert practice; the music, instrumental and vocal; quartet, duet, solo; and advising the girl to be quick, as she had but twenty-five minutes, he went humming and trilling into his dressing-room. Nesta signalled at her mother's door for permission to enter.
"No," said Polly, "but I wish they were, mean old things; when I was going down to play a duet with Jasper! We should have had a good long time before breakfast. Oh, mayn't I go just once, mamsie? Nobody'll see me if I tuck my foot under the piano; and I can sew 'em on afterwards there'll be plenty of time. Do, just once, mamsie!" "No," said Mrs. Pepper firmly, "there isn't any time but now.
And Anna, drawing her dainty white skirts closely round her, stood still to listen. It was certainly an extraordinary combination of sounds. It seemed at first as though two people were singing a duet in different tunes and without any regard to time; there was persistent melody and yet there was utter discord, and it seemed accompanied by the clanging of fire-irons.
This knight who wanted to marry her, and who would not tell his name. What did it mean? And the celebrated duet in the nuptial chamber what did it mean? It was beautiful music but what did it mean? Could anyone tell her? She had often asked, but no one had ever been able to tell her.
Elizabeth, for example, during the postlude of the duet with Tannhauser in the second act, has to justify the re-entry of the tender theme in the clarinet in slower tempo by looking as is indicated in the score after Tannhauser in the court of the castle and by beckoning to him.
He challenged her to duet before the good ladies, and she kindled, she was caught up by his gaiety, wondering at herself; faintly aware of her not being spontaneous. And she made her father laugh, just in the old way; and looked at herself in his laughter, with the thought, that she could not have become so changed; by which the girl was helped to jump to her humour.
Let us then repose ourselves on the dazzling white mats, and listen to the singular duet sung by those two mousmes: a strange musical medley, slow and mournful, beginning with two or three high notes, and descending at each couplet, in an almost imperceptible manner, into actual solemnity.
Expressively it slowly sinks away amid echoing phrases and yields to the duet of elegy and the first reel. But a new spirit has appeared. The sting of war-song is gone. And here is the reel in slow reluctant pace. After another verse of the fairy tune, the jig plays still slower, while above sings a new melody.
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