George Eric Mackay

“ How many persons are denounced as dead simply because they have ceased to breathe and move and show signs of a pulse—persons who, according to Gandolfi, may not, in all cases, be ready for burial! It is Gandolfi's opinion that persons "denounced as dead" may in some rare instances be the witnesses—the mute and fear-stricken witnesses—of their own funeral; that they may know perfectly well that they are going to be put into coffins, and thence into the earth, and yet be powerless, alive as they are, to avert the catastrophe of a legal murder! ”

“ They are all provided with a lover, a heroine, a rival, a tyrant (or a dotard) , and an all-pervading and insinuating chorus. These are the pieces of glass in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope which the manager can shake at his will and alter to the desired patterns. By a strange fatality the lot of the heroine almost invariably devolves on the soprano, and by a similar caprice of fortune the tenor invariably takes the part of the hero. We are at a loss to imagine why the chorus should make free with other people’s apartments and why the baritone should always pick a quarrel with the tenor. ”

“ THE difference between death and a state of trance—or, as the Germans put it, Todt and Scheintodt—has never been quite clearly understood by the generality of mankind. Society, which sometimes does its best for the living, does not always do its best for the dead (or those who appear to be dead) , and he would be a bold man who, without statistics, should assert that men, women, and children are never, by any chance, buried alive. ”

“ It were folly to suppose that the country that produced an Alfieri cannot produce a dramatist. It would doubtless cost a good deal to harness a young Pegasus; and Apollo would not play for the wages of an organ-grinder. But the accession of beauty would bring with it an accession of fame; and the accession of fame an almost inevitable accession of fortune. Pegasus would pay for his keep and Italian opera would be represented by a series of well-written libretti calculated to raise it still higher in the public estimation. ”

“ She hath no gems or jewels rare,
Or any gold except her hair;
But she shall be a minstrel’s bride,
And tune his harp at evening-tide!
The high-born dames, in silk and fur,
Shall turn their heads to look at her ”

“ In days when land is dear, and burial rights are less sacred than the rights of builders and contractors, coffins have been opened with the pickaxe, in the act of converting cemeteries into streets and gardens. Here a grave has been discovered whose inmate has turned in its shroud; here a corpse clutching its hair in a strained and unnatural position: dead men and dead women lying in their graves as dead men never lie in a Christian land at the moment of burial. ”

“ Query, why is the villain of the piece always a baritone?
Perhaps it is this sameness of material that in some measure detracts from the merit of the libretto. It is always excessively amusing—even in the most serious operas—to see that jealous, wilful, mal-à-propos sort of suitor, the baritone, always coming between the two innammorati. The tenor loathes him (in not a few of the operas) , but somehow or other, like the hero of “Waverley,” he is always more famous for manners than for manliness. ”

“ Few fashionable novels—happily defunct at the end of the season—have been more gladly welcomed, or more calmly tolerated; and the libretto-system has only escaped some very rough handling, out of consideration for the music with which it is eternally wedded.
We have heard of persons who maintain that a knowledge of Latin and French is equivalent to a knowledge of Italian, and that by their joint means an opera may be thoroughly mastered without the aid of a translation. We confess such a feat appears to us Herculean. ”

“ English law provides an interval of a week (more or less) between death and burial, and the seeming-dead may in a week's time return to life—that is to say, that the body, with the suspended life dormant within it, may, by chance or by medical treatment, reassume its functions, or a portion of its functions, before burial has become a legal or a sanitary necessity; but it can not be stated with certainty that all persons buried in a northern climate—such a climate, for instance, as England—are in reality dead after the delay of a week has been accorded. ”

“ Not only our monetary, but our musical system is theirs. If Italy has overrun us with organ-grinders, she has at least supplied us with singers, and those of the very best that could be obtained for love or money. The Italian opera is as much an English institution as the Bank, and the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street is a kindly patron. The moneyed classes have a partiality for Italian opera, and think nothing of fifty or a hundred pounds for the farewell benefit of a Grisi. They are musical epicures, and take to Italian singing as the Romans of old took to nightingales’ tongues. ”

“ Celebrated physicians can not be at the death-beds of all sick persons. The poor, and even the rich, must oftentimes content themselves with the services of doctors who are not famous either for learning or intuition; and the medicines and appliances by which distinguished physicians might succeed in testing the existence of life, in persons suffering from trance, would, in the case of poor people, cost too much; and no one is willing to guarantee their final success. For it is important to bear this point in mind: it is one thing to certify that a "corpse" is not really dead ”

“ It is time that musicians should remember (for we cannot bring ourselves to believe that they are altogether blameless in the matter) that music and poetry are twin sisters, always pining for each other’s society, and never more happy than when they are interchanging sentiments. ”

“ A poor woman at Castel del Giudice, in the province of Molise, was taken ill with the premonitory symptoms of childbirth, and, having fainted away while the doctor was being sent for, was, on his arrival, declared dead. Burial follows death very rapidly in southern countries, especially in Italy: it is the night of the tomb setting in without the twilight of the death-chamber; and eight-and-forty hours in the north of Italy, and four-and-twenty in the south, is the time allowed by law. ”

“ This grass—this grave were empty yet!
VI.
Of three fair sisters, two survive;
Yet both, God wot, have sins to shrive:
The one has bartered her peace for pelf,
The other for shame has sold herself. ”

“ The poets of olden time were musicians in their own right. In days more especially noted for a division of labour, we cannot perhaps in justice expect these things. But surely there can be no just reason why composers should select the worst authors for their associates, and link their music for ever with doggerel of the worst class, calculated to plunge it into untimely oblivion and bring discredit upon themselves for being associated with triflers. ”

“ The doctor was of opinion that the girl had died from excitement—overjoy, it is said, at the prospect of being married, but the legal name for the catastrophe was disease of the heart, and with this verdict her place in society was declared vacant. When the first shovelful of earth was thrown down on the coffin, strange noises were heard proceeding therefrom, "as of evil spirits disputing over the body of the dead." The grave-diggers took to flight, and the mourners began praying; but the bridegroom, less superstitious than the others, insisted on the coffin being unnailed. ”

“ We do not envy the student who attempts it. He will weave himself a web that will inevitably imprison his faculties during the whole performance of the opera, and go home minus the music. He will lose himself in a fable of his own invention, that will be at loggerheads with the stage-business—with the printed Italian—and with the authorised English translation. ”

“ That "the organic phenomena which precede apparent death can not of themselves be distinguished from those which precede real death, and that for a certain time it will be difficult to decide, scientifically, whether life be suspended, or extinct" ”

“ Filled with insane ambition to excel their retiring brothers—the true poets—as impertinently as the goose endeavours to outfly the eagle, the Italian poetasters attempt everything for a short-lived popularity. ”

“ In some instances the victims of trance have been known to rise out of their coffins. A case is recorded of a young lady in Leipsic, who, being reported dead during a nervous attack, was placed in her coffin in her parents' house, and there kept duly dressed for the grave, with the lid of the coffin still unnailed. ”

“ Judge then of the beauties of a so-called Italian opera, when four foreigners have had their fingers in the pie, and scooped away everything but the crust!
But it would be unjust in us to give all the blame of the absurdity to the translator, and our space, even if so inclined, would prevent us from indulging in too close an examination of his defects. The work of comparison may be pursued by others. ”

“ There are, they affirm, a great many ways of proving death, if sufficient time allowed be for experiments; but during the experiments, or before the experiments have begun, the supposed corpse may, they declare, pass from apparent to real death, and thus, without sign or warning, frustrate all inquiry. ”

“ Much as the translator may err in grammar, synonyms, and common sense—or rather in the absence of all these—he is no worse than his associates, the self-dubbed “laureates” of the playhouse. We have a very large crow indeed to pluck with those gentlemen of the quill who flippantly style themselves poets, and invariably remind us of the assertion that the wild-goose flies higher than the eagle, falling down lead-like with a “squeak” from the confines of the eagle’s nest. ”

“ We know them by their drivelling sentiments and their screaming attempts at passion, as well as by the reckless manner with which they throw about queries and notes of admiration for the bewilderment of the incautious. ”

“ But humanity prevailed over ignorance, and cupidity gave way to medical skill. The lady was thoroughly revived by a medical practitioner of the neighborhood, and lived for many a long day to tell the story of her escape from the tomb. ”

“ Scarcely an opera but has some fault or other in every paragraph, and certainly no opera, whether translated from the French, German, or Italian, or translated three-deep from all of them, but has some absurdity in every page. The worst translated operas are those of Verdi ”