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No blunders could do much to mar my pleasure. There first I heard the concertos of Corelli; but also, which far more profoundly affected me, a few selections from Jomelli and Cimarosa. With Handel I had long been familiar, for the famous chorus singers of Lancashire sang continually at churches the most effective parts from his chief oratorios.
At bottom, in the works of Jomelli and Porpora, Carissimi and Durante, in the most wonderful compositions of Handel and Bach, there was never a hint of a renunciation of public success, or the sacrifice of an effect of art, or the abdication of human pride hearkening to its own prayer.
There had been a kind of opéra comique in France for many years, a species of musical pantomime which was very popular at the fairs of St. Laurent and St. Gervais. This form of entertainment scarcely came within the province of art, but it served as a starting-point for the history of opéra comique, which was afterwards so brilliant. The success of the Italian company which performed the comic operas of Pergolesi, Jomelli, and others, fired the French composers to emulation, and in 1753 the first French opéra comique, in the strict sense of the word, 'Le Devin du Village, by the great Rousseau, was performed at the Académie de Musique. Musically the work is feeble and characterless, but the contrast which it offered to the stiff and serious works of the tragic composers made it popular. Whatever its faults may be, it is simple and natural, and its tender little melodies fell pleasantly upon ears too well accustomed to the pomposities of Rameau and his school. At first lovers of opéra comique in Paris had to subsist chiefly upon translations from the Italian; but in 1755 'Ninette
The clarionets were too much for him, but on seeing third and fourth horn-parts, he exclaimed: "What does the man want? The greatest of our composers have always been contented with two. Shades of Pergolesi, of Leo, of Jomelli! How they must shudder at the bare thought! Four horns! Are we at a hunting-party? Four horns! Enough to blow us to perdition!"
Oh! that every one of those "flourishers" had a stout old Jomelli at his elbow to rouse him out of his craziness by a good sound box on the ear as Jomelli actually did when Giardini, in his presence, spoilt a glorious passage of melody by jumps, trills, and "mordenti." Lulli, too, conducts himself in a preposterous way. He is one of your damnable perpetrators of jumps.
He inquired the reasons for the presence of so great a throng, and every one answered by two names: "'Zambinella! Jomelli! "He entered and took a seat in the pit, crowded between two unconscionably stout abbati; but luckily he was quite near the stage. The curtain rose.
Jeri l'altro fummo nella prova dell' opera del Sign. Jomelli, la quale e una opera che e ben scritta e che me piace veramente. Il Sign. Jomelli ci ha parlato ed era molto civile. E fummo anche in una chiesa a sentir una Musica la quale fu del Sign. Ciccio di Majo, ed era una bellissima Musica. Anche lui ci parlci ed era molto compito. La Signora de' Amicis canto a meraviglia.
They were mistresses of all the different schools of religious, dramatic, and national compositions, and Gluck, Jomelli, Pergolesi, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Scotch and Irish melodies, Neapolitan canzonette, and the popular airs of their own country, were all rendered by them with equal mastery. "Thus with a kiss I die," "Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead,"
A line of brilliant composers in the school of Durante and Leo brings us down through Pergolesi, Derni, Terradiglias, Jomelli, Traetta, Ciccio di Majo, Galuppi, and Giuglielmi, to the most distinguished of the early Italian composers, Nicolo Piccini, who, mostly forgotten in his works, is principally known to modern fame as the rival of the mighty Gluck in that art controversy which shook Paris into such bitter factions.
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