Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
The frequenters of the Palais Royal Theatre are not babes; young people of either sex are not taken there; only the emancipated gain admittance; and to the seasoned sinners who haunt theatres of this type these plays by MM. Meilhac and Halévy are harmless. Indeed, I do not recall any play of theirs which could hurt any one capable of understanding it.
The celebrated French critic Sainte-Beuve pays a charming tribute to Halévy, whom he knew and loved well: "Halévy had a natural talent for writing, which he cultivated and perfected by study, by a taste for reading which he always gratified in the intervals of labor, in his study, in public conveyances everywhere, in fine, when he had a minute to spare.
Georges Bizet was born at Paris, Oct. 25, 1838, and in an artistic atmosphere, as his father, an excellent teacher, was married to a sister of Mme. Delsarte, a talented pianist, and his uncle, a musician, was the founder of the famous Delsarte system. He studied successively with Marmontel and Benoist, and subsequently took lessons in composition from Halevy, whose daughter he afterwards married.
M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his virtue sits easily on him, and though he is sound on the main question, he looks upon the vagaries of others with a gentle eye. M. Halévy, it seems to me, is made of somewhat sterner stuff.
MS. in University College, London, quoted by Halévy, La Jeunesse de Bentham, pp. 289-290. Bentham's standard of 'pleasure and pain' constituted in many ways an important advance upon 'natural right. It was in the first place founded upon a universally accepted fact; all men obviously do feel both pleasure and pain. That fact was to a certain extent measurable.
"Carmen," an opera in four acts, words by Meilhac and Halevy, adapted from Prosper Merimée's romance of "Carmen," was first produced at the Opera Comique, Paris, March 3, 1875, with Mme. Galli-Marie in the title-rôle and Mlle. Chapuy as Michaela. The scene is laid in Seville, time 1820.
Still more he shows us this serious side in his beautiful poem on Jehuda ben Halevy, a poet belonging to "the great golden age of the Arabian, Old-Spanish, Jewish school of poets," a contemporary of the troubadours: "He, too, the hero whom we sing, Jehuda ben Halevy, too, had his lady-love; but she was of a special sort.
In 1860, for the first time, he was assisted by M. Ludovic Halévy, and in the twenty years since then their names have been linked together on the title-pages of two score or more plays of all kinds drama, comedy, farce, opera, operetta and ballet.
It is amusing to note how often M. Halévy has chosen to tell the tale of love among the very rich. There is no trace or taint of snobbery in M. Halévy's treatment of all this magnificence; there is none of the vulgarity which marks the pages of Lothair, for example; there is no mean admiration of mean things. There is, on the other hand, no bitterness of scourging satire.
Bettina remained long, leaning on the balustrade of her balcony. "It seems to me," said she, "that I am going to be very fond of this place." By LUDOVIC HALEVY
Word Of The Day
Others Looking