The first operatic representations, properly so called, in Strassburg, took place in the year 1701, and the operas were German, performed by German companies.
It is, however, not only in their great operatic works, but even in ballads with the accompaniment of the pianoforte, that we meet with exquisitely enchanting strains of fairy music.
This I rather liked, since as the performances consisted chiefly of operatic music and oratorios, it enabled me to follow cursorily the words with the music.
Meanwhile, in the newspapers he read an announcement of an operatic performance in which Signora Bollini should again take part; thus he inferred that she had returned from Riga.
Beate, shrugging her shoulders, announced Herr Spiegeler, the indefatigable, irrepressible operatic reporter, who in addition provided the radicalism for many German theatrical newspapers.
When the operatic lover meets his sweetheart he puts her in a corner and, turning his back upon her, comes down to the footlights and tells the audience how he adores her.
Wagner never succeeded in avoiding the operatic convention and nobody else ever will.
He did next day read me "Tristan" in his study, and we spoke long and earnestly as to its adaptability for operatic treatment.
Nearly a year elapses before he again finds himself directing an operatic company.
In the latter, his object was a story so arranged as would admit of the then orthodox operatic treatment with its set forms of solos, choruses, ensembles, etc.
Mozart and Gluck both composed in the French and Italian style, and Meyerbeer, the then ruler of the German operatic stage, fashioned his popular works on the spectacular style of the grand French opera.
An earnest committee had been working some time towards this end; concerts andoperatic performances had been given in Germany and subscription lists opened to provide the necessary funds.
One, "La Donna Serpente," attracted him, and seemed to invite operatic treatment.
For the first time he would be sole controller of operatic performances.
Still another commentator ascribes the decline of pure singing in recent years to the rise of a new school of dramatic interpretation among the younger operatic artists.
Operatic performance has been improved in every other respect, but pure singing, the perfection of the vocal art, has become almost a rarity.
The manner in which I finally executed the plan of Tristan shows clearly how little I was thinking of our operatic theatres and the scope of their capabilities.
But I was much elated and pleased to see that the translation of the four operatic librettos which had so far appeared had been published.
This view was shared even in the highest circles, and it seemed as if an attempt was being made to discover some means whereby to win over to my side that part of the operatic public which could turn the scales.
For this reason, when I brought out a translation of my operatic poems, I felt that its very detailed preface could not be dedicated to any worthier man.
Charnal finally disclosed himself), and advised me to go to Roger, a highly gifted and experienced operatic singer, who had been a favourite with the Parisian public and was master of the German language.
It had been a difficult task for him to obey my instructions, as he maintained that it was against all operaticcustom for the singer not to address such an important passage straight to the public from the footlights.
I remained unshaken in my resolve to produce my Nibelungen dramas just as though the present operatic stage did not exist, since the ideal theatre of my dreams must of necessity come sooner or later.
This was the first sign out of many which soon revealed to me the fact, that even in the circles of the operatic administration itself Tannhauser was already regarded as labour lost and sheer waste of trouble.
I have spoken of Mr. Parker's quasi-operatic tendency.
He was especially happy in imparting to singers the proper Auffassung (grasp, interpretation, finish) of songs, and coached many American and French artists for the operatic stage.
The other songs are good; even the comic-operatic flavor of the "Cavalry Song" is redeemed by its catchy sweep.
Thousands of pieces of music, from short songs to operatic and orchestral scores, I studied with all available conscience.
Ask any one of his acquaintances why Cooper is never seen without a half-dozen magazines under his arm, an odd volume or two of French criticism, and a couple of operatic scores.
Finisterra knew twelve operatic soprano rôles by heart, and when she was ten she played Juliet to Tamagno's Romeo.
I have seen a pair of starving lovers in an operatic garret, who would surely not have passed the scrutiny of a United Charities investigator.
But Mascagni chafed at the teaching, and soon left Milan to become conductor to a touring operatic company.
Thus Lohengrin came upon the ordinary operatic stage as a more advanced departure from currentoperatic models than its composer had made it.
On that they swear blood-brotherhood; and at this opportunity the old operatic leaven breaks out amusingly in Wagner.
Gunther, Hagen and Brynhild are left together to plot operatic vengeance.
At the same time, I know how difficult it will be to conquer this prejudice against me as an operatic composer.
At this time Tchaikovsky was in search of an operatic subject.
I will just prove to you by one example how far the symphonic prevails over the operatic style in his operas.
True, artists like Parish-Alvars have composed operatic fantasias for the harp, in which there are melodies; but this is rather forced.
Nevertheless, the friendship between himself and Piccioli remained unbroken, and to this he owed, in a great measure, his thorough acquaintance with the music of the Italian operatic school.
I wrote music to the words without troubling to consider the difference between operatic and symphonic style.
The tenor gave a solo, in the style of a wretched operatic aria, in such a magnificent voice that I was quite carried away.
Throughout the entire evening artists and audience alike experienced a sense of complete satisfaction, rarely felt during any operatic performance.
Benardaky had married one of the three sisters Leibrock, operatic artists well known to the Russian public.
Probably this ballet morceau was one of the first of many medleys of national character dances so familiar now to the operatic stage.
This new form lacked the spectacular glories of the really operaticshows described in Chapter XI and it abandoned even their ways of voicing the utterances of individual characters.
What might be described as operatic tendencies in the music of worship date further back than the foundation of Christianity.
It must have been but an operatic chorus that sang in the semicircular space just below the stage and in front of the audience.
But this is only a marginal note, not in the Operatic score.
An intimate study of the great operatic masterpiece.
The romantic story of a sweet voice that thrilled great audiences in operatic Paris, Berlin, etc.
Albert Coates, an Englishman of Russian birth who is musical director at the Imperial Russian Opera in Petrograd, created a fine impression as conductor of the Wagner operas on this his first appearance here as operatic conductor.
Not in living memory were so many operatic performances to be seen in London between the beginning of February and the end of July.
She was a familiar and famous figure on the operatic stage in London, Paris, and St. Petersburg.
I heard a story about an operatic artist who for a long time refused to play parts demanding the exhibition even of a fraction of a limb, and all because her lower members were too attenuated to attract anything else but ridicule.
Operatic stars are violent sometimes in these exhibitions of jealousy.
These words were inscribed on the last sheet of the manuscript of Wagner's only operatic comedy.
At Magdeburg he met Minna Planer, a member of the operatic troupe, who later became his wife.
Sad to say, of late years fortune had not smiled upon him; he had met with losses, but that did not prevent him from humming his operatic airs at every possible opportunity.
I am strongly inclined to the belief that in one form or the other, preferably the accompanied, recitative is a necessary integer in the operatic sum.
The significance of this classification in operatic literature may be learned from an effort which I have made in another chapter to discuss the terms Classic and Romantic as applied to music.
Operatic words were once merely stalking-horses for tunes, but that day is past.
They are, in fact, much nearer to the conventional operatic type than to the works which came after them, and were called Musikdramen.
In the case of theatrical or operatic bands the arrangement of the forces is dependent largely upon the exigencies of space.
There were three years in London when Italian and English were mixed in theoperatic representations.
The public gardens are full of charming little resorts, where, every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one can have either a concert of good music, or a very fair dramatic or operatic performance.
For that one measure, his operatic fate was trembling in the balance.
The event had fully justified the prediction of the old maestro, and in hisoperatic rôles Thayer was finding out where his real greatness lay.
An operaticengagement would engross him completely.
These conditions, together with the absence of an operatic stage, a concert system, or a musical public, turned the fertile musical impulses of the period to the benefit of the Church.
It shows a lamentable ignorance (the italics are mine) of operatic conditions prevailing at the present time.
If this opinion be justified, and I hope it is not, it suggests a sad commentary on the result of efforts made on behalf of operatic education in England from the time of Carl Rosa to that of Dr.
The headquarters of such a company would, naturally, be in London, but an "operatic season" should be arranged for in the principal cities of the provinces.
He only commenced writing sacred works when close upon thirty years of age, although by that time he had proved to be a prolific composer of instrumental and operatic music.
