United States or Tajikistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The second line in its turn quickly split into those who, not content with the form, sought to alter it, and those who, quite content with it, went gaily on, turning out opera after opera, dealing with modern subjects in the old-fashioned way. Of these last Gounod must be reckoned the chief; and he began, not where Mozart left off, but with the Mozartean method of the "Don Giovanni" period.
Together with M. Gounod and other Parisian celebrities, I was nominated one of an artistic committee, of which Auber was elected president. The society often held its meetings at the house of a certain Count Osmond, a lively young man, who had lost an arm in a duel, and posed as a musical dilettante.
So soon as she had mastered these, Laura entered upon a new world of delight. Her taste in music was as yet a little immature Gounod and even Verdi were its limitations. But to hear, responsive to the lightest pressures of her finger-tips, the mighty instrument go thundering through the cadences of the "Anvil Chorus" gave her a thrilling sense of power that was superb.
I quote again from Gounod: "But suddenly, and with feverish audacity, the Allegro breaks out in the major key, an Allegro full of passion and delirium, deaf to the warnings of Heaven, regardless of remorse, enraptured of pleasure, madly inconstant and daring, rapid and impetuous as a torrent, flashing and swift as a sword, overleaping all obstacles, scaling balconies, and bewildering the alguazils."
An aggressive disposition, an energy and faith that accepted no rebuffs, and the power of "toiling terribly," had enabled Gounod to battle his way into the front rank. Unlike Rossini and Auber, he disdained social recreation, and was so rarely seen in the fashionable quarters of Paris and London that only an occasional musical announcement kept him before the eyes of the public.
To be more precise, it was rendering the waltz-tune in "Faust," an opera by the late M. Gounod. Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken knew nothing of "Faust" or of its composer. But they could recognise a tune. "Which?" repeated Tobias gasping, holding by the handrail of the bridge. "You or me? Or both, perhaps?" "Two glasses o' port wine only, 'Bias . . . and you saw me at the station.
It was thought a little strange that he would not forgive her, but the obscurity of the story of this point and the delight felt in her misfortune helped to intensify and idealise Frank in the popular mind, and when he played Gounod in the still evenings the young ladies would steal from the villas and wander sentimentally through the shadows about the green.
'The part of Gilda is much better suited to her voice, take my word for it. 'What do you know about it? asked Schreiermeyer, smiling faintly, just enough to save the rude question from being almost insulting. 'When Gounod began Faust he was in love with a lady with a deep voice, answered Logotheti, 'but when he was near the end he was in love with one who had a high voice.
"Ah, who will take on himself to proscribe that pert mysticism, those fonts of toilet-water which Gounod invented!... There ought indeed to be astonishing penalties for choir masters who allow such musical effeminacy in church.
'So that you may be sure that you have a vocation. Good-bye, dear child. The Lord be with you. Agnes went into the dining-room, and she noticed that every one was listening to her father, who was talking of the success her mother had had at a concert. She had sung two songs by Gounod and Cherubino's Ave Maria. He declared that he had never seen anything like it.
Word Of The Day