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Updated: July 24, 2025
She did not know one note from another, but she had heard all the greatest singers of the last thirty years, in all the greatest opera-houses from Bayreuth to New York, and it horrified her to be obliged to admit that Margaret's singing sounded dreadfully like the best.
In short, I had hitherto frequented gambling-tables just as I frequented ball-rooms and opera-houses because they amused me, and because I had nothing better to do with my leisure hours. But on this occasion it was very different now, for the first time in my life, I felt what the passion for play really was.
Resolute and reckless, nothing deterred Villebecque. One season all the opera-houses in Europe obeyed his nod, and at the end of it he was ruined. The crash was utter, universal, overwhelming; and under ordinary circumstances a French bed and a brasier of charcoal alone remained for Villebecque, who was equal to the occasion.
Theaters and comic opera-houses were speedily built, and water was distributed over the city by the use of steam-engines. Then broke out the revolution, and many fine monuments were destroyed. But it was under the Directory that the Museum of the Louvre was opened, and under Napoleon the capital assumed a splendor it had never known before.
"Die Meistersinger" is photographic in many of its scenes, personages, and incidents; but so far as the stage pictures which we are accustomed to see in the opera-houses of New York and the European capitals are concerned, this statement must be taken with a great deal of allowance, owing to the fact that opera directors, stage managers, scene painters, and costumers are blithely indifferent to the verities of history.
And when, at last, Liszt gave it for the first time, on August 28, 1850, at Weimar, whence it gradually made its way to other opera-houses, its reception everywhere showed that it was very far from being considered a "popular" work.
And then there were the draughty opera-houses with the sylvan scenery pushed back and plush chairs and sofas pushed forward; with an ominous table, a pitcher of water on it and a glass, near the footlights. The houses were packed with more bewildered citizens. What a wonderful study of mob-psychology it would have offered!
A group of these existed in every town in the country, and had their "society" in every little city. They would come to New York and put up at expensive hotels, and get their education in theatres and opera-houses and "lobster-palaces"; in addition they had this weekly messenger of good form.
Starting from Paris, where they were concocted together with Scribe, Meyerbeer's operas went the round of the opera-houses of Europe, and save in one or two quarters Meyerbeer lorded it over the opera-houses of Europe. It may be true enough that some of his mighty works had not been played at Riga it may even be true that Wagner had not seen the scores.
Indeed, at the Italian opera-house he found more that was to his taste than at the French opera-houses. Bellini's music had a particular charm for Chopin, and he was also an admirer of Rossini. The above notes exemplify and show the truth of Liszt's remark: In the great models and the master-works of art Chopin sought only what corresponded with his nature.
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