Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/28

 works, which ought to be recast (it would not be difficult) in a great many places, to give them life again.

He left Rome after a stay of eight years. He had become known there by a few productions (the most important is a secular cantata, the Vintage Girls, which I have not been able to discover). Various circumstances drew him to Geneva, where he produced a comic opera Isabella and Gertrude, words by Favart. This had already been set to music by Blaise, but resettings were not objected to in those days. But it was Paris that our ambitious hero was determined to reach. He took advantage of being near Ferney to visit, and did not hesitate to ask him for the book of a comic opera. Voltaire promised nothing But he did not lose sight of this young man, who besides having excellent manners showed great self confidence and firmness of mind. When, less than two years later news of the applause which greeted the Huron reached Ferney, he sent the musician who had suddenly become a celebrity two proposals for comic operas “one developed, and entitled The Baron of Otranto, which he had taken from one of his stories, A Prince’s Education; the other, entitled The Two Tuns, merely in outline.” He urged Grétry to preserve the author’s anonymity, begging him to offer these pieces to the Italian company as the work of a young provincial. This charge was so punctually fulfilled that the actors, dissatisfied with the books, but discerning in them traces of real literary aptitude, strongly recommended the author to come up from