Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/191

Rh better music in Italy; nowhere was it more widely spread among the people.

All around these two operatic capitals—Venice with its seven theatres, Naples with its four or five—of which the San Carlo, one of the largest in Europe, had an orchestra of eighty performers —the opera was flourishing in all the cities of Italy: in Rome, with her famous theatres—the Argentina, the Aliberti, the Capranica; in Milan and Turin, whose opera houses gave daily performances, during the season, save on Fridays, and where stupendous actions were represented, such as battles fought by cavalry; at Parma, where stood the Farnese theatre, the most luxurious in Italy; at Piacenza, Reggio, Pisa, and Lucca, which, according to Lalande, possessed "the most perfect orchestra;" throughout all Tuscany, and all Venetia, and at Vicenza and Verona, which city, writes Edmund Rolfe, "was mad over opera." It was the great national passion. The Abbé Coyer, in 1763, was in Naples during a famine; the rage for spectacles was not diminished thereby.

Let us enter one of these opera-houses. The performance begins, as a rule, at eight o'clock, and ends about half-past twelve. The cost of the places in the parterre is a paule (sixpence