United States or Gibraltar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It must be said that Gluck himself stooped to be the instigator of these intrigues." In spite of all, the day came for the presentation of Piccinni's opera, "Roland," and the family broke into tears when he went to the theatre. He alone was calm in the midst of this desolation, reassured his wife, and departed with his friends.
Two years later, the Prince of Brunswick's younger brother went to Naples to visit him, and there he happened upon a domestic scene which gives us a pretty notion of Piccinni's home life. "He surprised Piccinni in the midst of his family, and was amazed at the tableau.
But we are not concerned here with the history of music, only with the intimate history of musicians. Piccinni's domestic life was so beautiful, that it makes it all the more pitiable that he should have been dragged willy-nilly into a contest for which he had neither inclination nor ability. Piccinni fell in love with a pupil, like him an Italian, Vicenza Sibilla.
In this same war of operatic schools and composers which raged in Paris upon the reforms of Gluck, the Italian composer Piccinni was haled to the front as an unwilling opponent of Gluck. The world is needlessly cruel to those who happen to interfere in any way with the favourites of posterity, and Piccinni's name is a byword in the history of music.
They and their many children went through more vicissitudes than have fallen to the lot of many musicians; but always they loved one another and their art, and there always remains that picture which the Prince of Brunswick stumbled upon, when he knocked at Piccinni's door, and found him rocking the cradle of one of his children, while another tugged at his coat in boisterous fun, and the mother beamed her enjoyment.
Word Of The Day