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It is true that, in England, the art of the ballet has gone down; the prima ballerina assoluta is getting rare, the primo uomo is extinct. The training of dancers as dancers leaves more and more to be desired, but that is a defect which we share, at the present time, with most other countries; while the beauty of the spectacle, with us, is unique.
But to her, the royal crû was very much like the private room. It said nothing. A neighbouring table was more eloquent. Among the people seated there was an imperial woman with an imperial manner, whom Cassy instantly recognised. She was prima donna, prima donna assoluta, and though Cassy did not know it nor would it have interested her if she had known dissoluta also. To be in her shoes!
Gigue at once began to walk up and down the courtyard, smoking vigorously, and talking volubly concerning the future of his pupil Cicely Bourne, and the triumph she would make some two years hence as a 'prima donna assoluta, far greater than Patti ever was in her palmiest days, and Roxmouth was perforce compelled, out of civility, as well as immediate diplomacy, to listen to him with some show of interest.
"You are a fool, Conrad, despite your seventy years," said Haydn, "to call old Paperl my prima donna assoluta, and compare him with the nightingale. But tell me, for God's sake, where did the bird hear that melody? Why, Paperl whistles the great base-air from 'The Creation' as though he were the first singer. Where did he learn it?"
Thus, for twelve years the Baroness had filled the part in her household of prima donna assoluta, without a rival.
He has, however, painted the glorification of the danseuse, of that lady grandiloquently described as prima donna assoluta. What magic he evokes as he pictures her floating down stage!
The costume of the prima ballerina assoluta in our grandfather's days was something like an umbrella and a pair of braces: the umbrella shrank to the en-tout-cas, and the en-tout-cas to the open parasol; unless the movement is arrested, in the course of time a lampshade will be reached, and ultimately, say, fifty years hence, the Genée of the period will have nothing more of skirt and petticoat than some kind of fringe round the waist, indicating, like our coccygeal vertebrae, or the rudimentary limbs of the whale, a mere useless atrophied apparatus.
Thus, for twelve years the Baroness had filled the part in her household of prima donna assoluta, without a rival.
"That is the parrot singing an air from Joseph Haydn's 'Creation," exclaimed Conrad, bursting into triumphant laughter. "And just listen, doctor, the prima donna assoluta of the good God has become entirely silent, and listens with delight to the divine melodies, modulations, and harmonies of my dear master Joseph Haydn."
You may possibly get your wish, but I! why, my dear, I see myself in futur-oe as a 'prima donna assoluta' perhaps, with several painted and padded bassi and tenori making sham love to me in opera till I get perfectly sick of cuore and amore, and cry out for something else by way of a change! I am quite positive that love, love such as we read of in poetry and romance, doesn't really exist!
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