Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/193

Rh a general 'Ah!' as though they were admiring a Midsummer Night bonfire."

This description, a trifle exaggerated, is none the less not so very unlike certain Italian performances of the present day. A French or German spectator present at such scenes would be inclined to doubt the sincerity of the emotion which the Italian public professes to experience at the opera; he would conclude that the pleasure of going to the theatre was, for these people, simply the pleasure of finding themselves in a crowd.—Nothing of the kind. All this uproar is suddenly hushed at certain passages of the work.—"They listen, they go into ecstasies only when the arietta is sung," says the Abbé Coyer. "I am wrong: they pay attention also to the recitatives obbligati, more moving than the ariette." At these moments, "however slight the nuances, none escapes these Italian ears; they seize them, feel them, savour them with a relish which is as a foretaste of the joys of Paradise."

Let us not suppose that these are "concert pieces," valued solely for their beauty of form. They are, in most cases, expressive and sometimes highly dramatic passages. President de Brosses reproaches the French for judging Italian music before they have heard it in Italy. "One must be perfectly acquainted with the language and able to enter into the meaning of the words. In Paris we hear dainty Italian minuets or great arias loaded with roulades; and we pretend that Italian music, in other respects melodious, is capable of nothing better than playing with syllables, and is lacking in the expression characteristic of the emotion. …" Nothing could be more mistaken; it excels, on the