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Updated: May 4, 2025
An account is given by Sir William Gell of an excursion by sea to the ruins of such a Roman villa on the promontory of Posilipo, to which he had taken Sir Walter in a boat on the 26th of January. Life, vol. x. pp. 157-8. For a picturesque sketch of Naples during the insurrection of 1647 see Sir Walter's article on Masaniello and the Duke of Guise. Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. iv. pp. 355-403.
It was equally uncertain whether the principal female singer would be sufficiently recovered from the influenza to make her appearance; Mr. Harleigh, the Masaniello of the night, was hoarse, and rather unwell, in consequence of the great quantity of lemon and sugar-candy he had eaten to improve his voice; and two flutes and a violoncello had pleaded severe colds.
"It would be doing Masaniello injustice, however, if we did not add, that having no distinct prospect of rendering essential service to his country, he was at the same time totally free from any sinister views of personal aggrandizement.
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.
When Wagner wrote his essay on "The Music of the Future" for the Parisians he remembered his obligations to the Dresden idol of his boyhood by calling attention to "the still very noticeable connection" of his early work, "Tannhäuser," with "the operas of my predecessors, among whom I name especially Weber," He might have mentioned others, Gluck, for instance, who curbed the vanity of the singers, and taught them that they were not "the whole show;" Marschner, whose grewsome "Hans Heiling" Wagner had in mind when he wrote his "Flying Dutchman;" Auber, whose "Masaniello," with its dumb heroine, taught Wagner the importance and expressiveness of pantomimic music, of which there are such eloquent examples in all his operas.
Assume a mysterious air of "I could if I would," when Miss Love's elopement is mentioned, and state with heroic confidence that the Vesuvius scene in "Masaniello" at Astley's beat Drury by thirteen bricks and two ounces of Greek fire. You must pretend to know the salaries of all the employés in every establishment, and be able to describe the plot of every new piece the moment it is underlined.
Fenella enters, and after describing the tumult in the city sinks exhausted with fatigue. It is sung by the best artists mezzo voce throughout, and when treated in this manner never fails to impress the hearer with its tenderness and beauty. At its close Pietro enters and once more rouses Masaniello to revenge by informing him that Alphonso has escaped.
And your fine patron, Signor Salvator, the murderer bandit who's escaped the halter he shall be sent to join his captain Masaniello in hell I'll have him out of Rome; that won't cost me much trouble.
That church by the Porta Capuna near the old fisher-market in the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of Masaniello began is memorable for having been the scene of one of his earliest proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejeweled Saint in a glass case, with two odd hands; or the enormous number of beggars who are constantly rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets.
By day it is as lively as a scene in Masaniello. By night, after nine o'clock, the whole stir of the quarter has subsided. Far away I hear the bell of some church tell the hours. But no noise disturbs my rest, unless perhaps a belated gondolier moors his boat beneath the window. My one maid, Catina, sings at her work the whole day through. My gondolier, Francesco, acts as valet.
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