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If we examine the fine passages in Lord Byron's dramas, the description of Rome, for example, in Manfred, the description of a Venetian revel in Marino Faliero, the concluding invective which the old doge pronounces against Venice, we shall find that there is nothing dramatic in these speeches, that they derive none of their effect from the character or situation of the speaker, and that they would have been as fine, or finer, if they had been published as fragments of blank verse by Lord Byron.
He wrote with great facility. "Il Furioso," "Parisina," "Torquato Tasso," "Lucrezia Borgia," and "Gemma di Vergi" rapidly followed one another. In 1835 he brought out "Marino Faliero," but its success was small. Ample compensation was made, however, when in the same year "Lucia" appeared and was received with acclamations of delight.
"The Venetians," muttered Kenelm, "decapitated Marino Faliero for conspiring against his own order, the nobles. The Venetians loved their institutions, and had faith in them. Is there such love and such faith among the English?"
We all remember the broad frieze filled with Doges’ faces which is carried round the great hall of the ducal palace in Venice, wherein the place assigned to the traitor, Marino Faliero, contains a black veil instead of the usual portrait.
The "Donna del Lago," based upon Walter Scott's "Lady of the Lake," was produced at Naples in 1819. The same year he opened the Carnival in Milan with "Bianca e Faliero," and before its close he produced "Maometto secondo" at Naples. During the next two or three years his muse was very prolific, and in 1823 appeared another of his great works, "Semiramide," which made a furor at Venice.
Uningratiating splendour Doges and Heaven Venetian pride The most beautiful picture of all A non-scriptural Tintoretto The Sala del Collegio The Sala del Senato More Doges and Heaven The Council of Ten Anonymous charges Tintoretto's "Last Judgment" An immense room Tintoretto's "Paradiso" Sebastiano Ziani and his exploits Pope Alexander III and Barbarossa Old blind Dandolo The Crusades Zara The Fall of Constantinople Marino Faliero and his fall The first Doge in the room The last Doge in the room The Sala dello Scrutinio Palma's "Last Judgment" A short way with mistresses The rest of the Doges Two battle pictures The Doges' suites The Archæological Museum The Bridge of Sighs The dungeons.
In the preface to Marino Faliero, a composition that abounds in noble passages, and rests on a fine and original conception of character, he mentions his 'desire of preserving a nearer approach to unity, than the irregularity which is the reproach of the English theatre. And this sound view of the importance of form, and of the barbarism to which our English genius is prone, from Goody Blake and Harry Gill up to the clownish savagery which occasionally defaces even plays attributed to Shakespeare, is collateral proof of the sanity and balance which marked the foundations of his character, and which at no point of his work ever entirely failed him.
Returning to the church proper, we find more Doges. For Steno having annoyed the Doge by falling in love with a maid of honour, Faliero forbade him the palace, and in retaliation Steno scribbled on the throne itself a scurrilous commentary on the Doge's wife.
The same year Delacroix, who had already given in 1824 Le Massacre de Scio, in 1826 La Mort du Doge Mariano Faliero, exhibited LE Christ au Jardin des Oliviers, acquired for the Church of Saint Paul; Justinien, for the Council of State; and La Mort de Sardanapale. M. Jules Mareschal says:
It was first interpreted by Pasta and Rubini, and Lablache won his earliest London triumph in it. "Marino Faliero" was composed for Paris in 1835, and "L'Elisir d'Amore," one of the most graceful and pleasing of Donizetti's works, for Milan in 1832. "Lucia di Lammermoor," based on Walter Scott's novel, was given to the public in 1835, and has remained the most popular of the composer's operas.
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