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Even at Vienna Gluck was planning the reforms in opera that were to banish the prevailing vocal inanities from the stage, and make his name immortal. He did not minimize the beauty of contemporary operatic music, but claimed that it consisted merely of a set of conventional arias and scenas, and that the music did not in any way emphasize or illustrate the meaning of the words.
Not to conclude the infinite scenas of the race's life and toil and happiness and sorrow, but haply that the boards be clear'd from oldest, worst incumbrances, accumulations, and Man resume the eternal play anew, and under happier, freer auspices.
My lady's piano was open, covered with scattered sheets of music and exquisitely-bound collections of scenas and fantasias which no master need have disdained to study. My lady's easel stood near the window, bearing witness to my lady's artistic talent, in the shape of a water-colored sketch of the Court and gardens.
Meyerbeer's first work was the oratorio "Gott und die Natur," which was performed before the Grand Duke with such success as to gain for him the appointment of court composer. Meyerbeer's concerts at Darmstadt and Berlin were brilliant exhibitions; and Moscheles, no mean judge, has told us that if Meyerbeer had devoted himself to the piano, no performer in Europe could have surpassed him. By advice of Salieri, whom Meyerbeer met in Vienna, he proceeded to Italy to study the cultivation of the voice; for he seems in early life to have clearly recognized how necessary it is for the operatic composer to understand this, though, in after-years, he treated the voice as ruthlessly in many of his most important arias and scenas as he would a brass instrument. He arrived in Vienna just as the Rossini madness was at its height, and his own blood was fired to compose operas
A private or subscription concert will soon give an opportunity of hearing some of its scenas, quatuors, etc. To come back, then, to what is more peculiarly Bostonian in the way of music, what concerts shall we have? Of large societies, the only one remaining now in operative force is the oldest and the largest, the Handel and Haydn Society.
There are operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat indecorous emotions with gusto and let us hope a sublime insensibility of all that they imply. They are warbling words to music, but they are not singing, for the meaning is not there.
At their house we used to get up 'Il Matrimonio Segreto, scenas from 'Don Giovanni, and many other passages from favorite operas; and Adelaide was always our admired prima donna; for she, as Fetis says of genius, 'invented forms, imposed them as types, and obliged us not only to acknowledge, but to imitate them.
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