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To the public, the fascinating prima donna, who had rushed up from the horizon like a brilliant rocket, and disappeared as suddenly, was only a nine-days wonder. Though for some time after, when opera-goers heard any other cantatrice much lauded, they would say: "Ah, you should have heard the Campaneo! Such a voice! She rose to the highest D as easily as she breathed. And such glorious eyes!"

The name of Pietro Mascagni is chiefly connected in the minds of opera-goers with 'Cavalleria Rusticana, This work, which was produced in 1890, lifted its composer at once into popularity. The story is founded upon one of Verga's Sicilian tales. Turiddu, a village Adonis, is beloved by the fair Lola.

It was not, after all, a new world, only newly arranged, like another scene in the same play. The actors, who came and went, were for the most part the acquaintances of the Washington winter, and the callers and diners and opera-goers and charity managers of the city.

He was a close follower of Rossini, and studied his music diligently, and though without a very profound knowledge of harmony or orchestration, succeeded in producing at least three works, "Norma," "Sonnambula," and "I Puritani," which were the delight of the opera-goers of his day, and still freshly hold the stage.

Lithe and portly-figured men, bearing dominos in their hands, saunter along the sidewalk, now dangling ponderous watch-chains, then flaunting highly-perfumed cambrics all puffing the fumes of choice cigars. If accosted by a grave wayfarer they are going to the opera! They are dressed in the style of opera-goers.

Lithe and portly-figured men, bearing dominos in their hands, saunter along the sidewalk, now dangling ponderous watch-chains, then flaunting highly-perfumed cambrics all puffing the fumes of choice cigars. If accosted by a grave wayfarer they are going to the opera! They are dressed in the style of opera-goers.

It was the one picturing the genial-looking old aristocrat with the sly smile. One of the things they had learned about this one was that his chief characteristic was his passion for music. He was a patron of musicians and he spent much time in Munich because he loved its musical atmosphere and the earnestness of its opera-goers. "The military band plays in the Feldherrn-halle at midday.

The scene in the first act where the specter of her murdered consort appears she made so thrilling and impressive that some of the older opera-goers compared it to the wonderful acting of Garrick in the "ghost-scene" of "Hamlet"; and those when she learns that Arsace is her son, and when she falls by his hand before the tomb of Ninus, were recounted in after-years as among the most startling memories of a lifetime.

A very ineffective "curtain" it was in the eyes of most opera-goers in the 'sixties, and is in the eyes of the ordinary play-goer of to-day; but, for all that, one of the most superb to be found in the whole of the dramatic works of the world. It is, I have just said, difficult to analyse the music of such a scene as this, and only one or two points may be noted now.

With a redundancy of melody, too often of the cheap and shallow kind, he rarely fails to please the masses of opera-goers, for his works enjoy a popularity not shared at present by any other composer.