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Updated: June 29, 2025
This gentleman was not a professional; he was a business man who at the same time was a good musician. Instead of starting me with a lot of scales and exercises, we began at once with the operas. I was twelve years old when I began, and after one year of this kind of study, made my début in the rôle of Inez, in L'Africaine. About this time I lost my kind instructor, who passed away.
I sat down and imagined myself in the midst of all that I had seen of pretty seaports in grand opera, the ship scene in L'Africaine, the landing of Desdemona in the Isle of Cyprus, the fishermen in Masaniello, and I thought I had never seen anything of this description so pleasing. I lost Vandy in the crowd, and sat drinking it all in till dark.
In 1860 he wrote two cantatas and commenced a musical drama called "Goethe's Jugendzeit," which was never finished. In 1862 and 1863 he worked upon "L'Africaine," and at last brought it forward as far as a rehearsal; but he died April 23, 1863, and it was not performed until two years after his death.
On Saturday, the twenty-third of April, he felt unwell, but a physician was not sent for till the next week, and in the mean time Meyerbeer was busy superintending the copyists engaged in his house on the score of "L'Africaine," for which he had, instead of his customary orchestral introduction, just written a long overture.
In the box the conversation turned upon stage management, and Corthell told how, in "L'Africaine," at the Opera, in Paris, the entire superstructure of the stage wings, drops, and backs turned when Vasco da Gama put the ship about. Jadwin having criticised the effect because none of the actors turned with it, was voted a Philistine by Mrs. Cressler and Corthell. But as he was about to answer, Mrs.
One evening at the end of August I had been hearing L'Africaine at the grand opera, and at the same time Marie Sass' delivery of the Marseillaise she sang as though she had a hundred fine bells in her voice, but she sang the national anthem like an aria. Outside the opera-house I hailed a cab. The coachman was asleep; a man jogged him to wake him, and he started to drive.
Meyerbeer was, up to the last, full of plans for the future, and while getting "L'Africaine" ready was looking for the libretto of a comic opera to compose "for amusement," as a repose between grander works.
Then, towards midnight, long after all staid and sensible people were abed, the flood would roll back, faster yet under the quiet moon, louder yet through the frosty air. But he never met the Circassian beauty, and he would have found "l'Africaine," for example, both tedious and unreasonable. To him each of these publics was new, and no less new than alien.
In 1836 "The Huguenots," unquestionably his masterpiece, was brought out, and it still holds its place as one of the grandest dramatic works the world has ever seen. In 1838 Scribe furnished him the libretto of "L'Africaine," but before the music was finished he had changed the text so much that Scribe withdrew it altogether.
The canvas is crowded with insignificant and confusing detail, and the general effect is finicking and invertebrate rather than solid and dignified. Meyerbeer was constantly at work upon his last opera, 'L'Africaine, from 1838 until 1864, and his death found him still engaged in retouching the score. It was produced in 1865.
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