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It follows the lines of Miller's Singspiele closely, but shows more originality, especially in the orchestration, than 'La Finta Semplice. The plot of the little work is an imitation of Rousseau's 'Devin du Village, telling of the quarrels of a rustic couple, and their reconciliation through the good offices of a travelling conjurer.

It is of course an extraordinary work when the composer's age is taken into account, but intrinsically differs little from the thousand and one comic operas of the period, Mozart's first German opera, 'Bastien und Bastienne, though written after 'La Finta Semplice, was performed before it. It was given in 1768 in a private theatre belonging to Dr. Anton Meszmer, a rich Viennese bourgeois.

Salzburg imitated Vienna, and Vienna, in spite of Gluck, was still Italian in its sympathies, so far at any rate as opera seria was concerned. Mozart wrote his first opera, 'La Finta Semplice, for Vienna, when he was twelve years old. It would have been performed in 1768 but for the intrigues of jealous rivals and the knavery of an impresario.

Scrope hazarded the idea that a chanting people was a religious people. He said, moreover, that there was a fine religiosity about Moussorgski, but that the most beautiful single piece of music in the world was Beethoven's sonata, Opus 111, he was thinking, he said, more particularly of the Adagio at the end, molto semplice e cantabile. It had a real quality of divinity.