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A tenor turns up from some Russian provincial town; a basso works himself to London from a theatre in Constantinople; rumours arrive of a peerless prima donna, with a voice which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out, by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga.
Its serene beginning, lugubrious interlude, with the dominant pedal never ceasing, a basso ostinato, gives color to Kleczynski's contention that the prelude in B minor is a mere sketch of the idea fully elaborated in No. 15.
It was Captain Hegermann, the commander of the ship, a big florid Saxon with great bushy golden whiskers and a basso voice like Edouard de Reszke. He was imposing in his smart uniform and gold braid and his manner had the self-reliant, authoritative air usual in men who have great responsibilities and are accustomed to command.
The basso, a black-bearded, bull necked man, sombre, mysterious, parted the chorus to right and left, and advanced to the footlights. The contralto, dressed as a boy, appeared. The soprano took stage, and abruptly the closing scene of the act developed. The violins raged and wailed in unison, all the bows moving together like parts of a well-regulated machine.
Brandon; "only think the best troupe we have yet had a new prima donna and a new basso." "Fiddlestick!" said the matter-of-fact husband. "What does it amount to?" "Brandon," said the lady with a true maternal dignity, "reflect upon the importance of the opera to the education of your daughter." "Nonsense!" said the broker, angrily.
There were three different species of flies which sought shelter in my tent, which, unitedly, kept up a continual chorus of sounds one performed the basso profondo, another a tenor, and the third a weak contralto. The first emanated from a voracious and fierce fly, an inch long, having a ventral capacity for blood quite astonishing.
'But, cried the delighted captain, 'you address me in the tones of a basso profundo! It is absurd. Do you suppose that I am to be deceived by your artifice? rogue that you are! Don't I know you are a woman? a sweet, an ecstatic, a darling little woman! He laughed. She shivered to hear the solitary echoes.
Rene, duke of Lorraine, at the head of the confederate forces, offered battle to Charles under the walls of Nancy; and the night before the combat Campo Basso went over to the enemy with the troops under his command. Still Charles had the way open for retreat.
When I learned that the young Englishman was living in the Basso Porto I was amazed, and when Clyde saw the place he was amazed also. 'Has he got through all his money already, Arthur asked me, 'that he lives in a hole like this? 'I am told, I said, 'that he has become a miser, spending money on nothing but drink, and living in a continuous sullen debauchery.
It is no excuse to say that the whole thing is absurd; that people do not carry on the business of life in song, nor expire in recitative. That is true, but even fairy tales have their consistency. Every part is adapted to every other, and, in the key, the whole is harmonious. Hermann, for instance, the basso, who sang Mephistopheles, would have been quite perfect if he had only remembered this.
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