John Hullah

“ Since the beginning of the 18th century comic opera has everywhere divided with serious the attention and affection alike of composers and audiences. Among every people cultivating musical drama it has had its creators and admirers. The conditions of comic opera in Italy and France, where it has as yet taken the deepest root and branched out most luxuriantly, have remained unchanged since its first growth in either country. In the former the dialogue of opera is still uttered musically ”

“ A class of comedian has consequently been formed, and indeed brought to perfection, in France, which has no existence in Italy—a class formed of actors, and therefore on the French stage speakers, who are also not unfrequently singers of considerable, and indeed very considerable, skill. On the Italian stage the singing actor never speaks. The progress therefore of comic opera in the direction it has taken in France has in Italy been impossible ”

“ Meanwhile the numerous alumni of the Neapolitan school, of whose existence the Abbé Raguenet had first made his countrymen aware, had been continuing the important work, initiated by the Florentine Academy a century earlier, of cultivating and refining musical expression—the widest sphere for whose exercise is unquestionably the musical drama. ”