United States or Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All of a sudden, an organ-grinder in the street began playing an air from the Freischuetz: 'Durch die Felder, durch die Auen ... The dance tune fell shrill and quivering on the motionless air. Gemma started ... 'He will wake mamma! Sanin promptly darted out into the street, thrust a few kreutzers into the organ-grinder's hand, and made him cease playing and move away.
Pen began to sing the drinking song out of Der Freischuetz. The dining-room windows were open, and his mother was softly pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura was looking at the sunset. The sweet fresh notes of the boy's voice came to the widow. It cheered her kind heart to hear him sing. "You you are taking too much wine, Arthur," Mr. Smirke said softly "you are exciting yourself."
But although manifesting a preference for Wagner, the kaiser is not averse to Mozart, or to the Italian school. "Der Freischuetz" is one of his favorite operas, and while he does not care for Falstaff, he is very fond of "I Medici," and greatly admires Leon Cavallo.
When he came back, Gemma thanked him with a little nod of the head, and with a pensive smile she began herself just audibly humming the beautiful melody of Weber's, in which Max expresses all the perplexities of first love. Then she asked Sanin whether he knew 'Freischuetz, whether he was fond of Weber, and added that though she was herself an Italian, she liked such music best of all.
The essential character of the horns is nowhere more truly conveyed than in the soft passage near the beginning of the overture to Der Freischuetz, and it is the contrast between the two nature scales on the C horn and the F horn which gives the character to this lovely idyll.
I did not want to discuss this wide subject; I merely remarked that Mendelssohn and Weber had their good points, which he allowed, but replied that they were utterly out of fashion. I did not agree with him, and, to show that Weber was a genius, I hummed the prayer from "Der Freischuetz."
The programs announced that it was the second appearance in America of Angelo Diotti, the renowned Tuscan violinist. The orchestra had perfunctorily ground out the overture to "Der Freischuetz," the baritone had stentorianly emitted "Dio Possente," the soprano was working her way through the closing measures of the mad scene from "Lucia," and Diotti was number four on the program.
She knew when the Freischuetz was going to be played, for she saw the wolves' den being brought out; she knew when they were going to put on the Flying Dutchman, for the ship and the sea came out of the shed; and Tannhaeuser, and Lohengrin, and many others. But the inevitable day dawned for the inevitable must happen.
Mrs. Carlyle suffered almost as much as her husband from these murderers of sleep and assassins of repose; on her mainly fell the task of contending with the cochin-chinas, whose senseless shrieks went "through her like a sword," of abating a "Der Freischuetz of cats," or a pandemonium of barrel organs, of suppressing macaws for which Carryle "could neither think nor live"; now mitigating the scales on a piano, now conjuring away, by threat or bribe, from their neighbours a shoal of "demon fowls"; lastly of superintending the troops of bricklayers, joiners, iron-hammerers employed with partial success to convert the top story of 5 Cheyne Row into a sound-proof room.
I felt weary and strangely heavy, as though my heart were ebbing away within me. I wished not to utter the fatal words; I knew beforehand that in response to them there would appear, as in the wolves' valley of the Freischuetz, some monstrous thing; but my lips parted against my will, and in a weak forced voice I shouted, also against my will: 'Lads, to the barges!
Word Of The Day