George Eric Mackay

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”