Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/180

168 delight! One could die of the rapture!")—A little later, in 1781, the Englishman, Moore, who was present at a "musical spectacle" in Rome, notes that "the public remained with folded hands and eyes half-closed, holding its breath. A young girl began to cry out, from the middle of the parterra: Dio! dove sono? Il placere mi fa morire!" (O God, where am I? I am dying of delight!) Some performances were interrupted by the sobs of the audience.

Music held such a position in Italy that the melomaniac Burney himself saw a danger to the nation in the passion which it aroused. "To judge by the number of musical establishments and public performances one might accuse Italy of cultivating music to excess."

The musical superiority of Italy was due not merely to her natural taste for music, but to the excellence of the musical training given throughout the peninsula.

The most brilliant centre of this artistic culture was Naples. It was the current opinion in Burney's days that the farther south one went the more refined was the musical taste encountered. "Italy" says Grosley, "may be compared with a tuning-fork of which Naples sounds the octave." President de Brosses, the Abbé Coyer, and above all Lalande, express the same opinion. "Music," writes Lalande "is the triumph of the Neapolitans. It seems that in this country the fibres of the ear are more sensitive, more harmonic, more sonorous than in the rest of Europe; the whole nation sings; gestures, the inflexion of the voice, the cadence of the syllables,