Theodore Winthrop

“ There was no epic dignity, no tragic elevation, no lyrical fervor, in the new opera. Passion it had; but it was a dreamy passionateness, not the passion that wakes action, nervous and intent. Even its wild strains, that meant terror and danger, came like the distant cry of wild beasts in a heavy midnight of the tropics, — a warning so far away, that it would never stir the slumbers of the imperilled.
Always this music seemed to sound and sing, with every note of voice or instrument, — “Brethren, what have we to do with that idle fiction of an earnest life? While we live, let us live in sloth. ”

“ Emasculated music! Such music as tyranny over mind and spirit calls for, to lull its unmanned subjects into sensual calm. Such as an Italian priesthood has encouraged, to make its people forget that they were men, and remember that they were and would ever be slaves. Music that no tyrant need ever dread, lest it should nerve the arm of a tyrannicide. Music that would never ring to any song of freedom, or chime with any lay of tender and ennobling love. ”

“ So the opera went on, to the great satisfaction of all dilettanteism.
It was thoroughly debilitating, effeminate music. No single strain of manly vigor rose, from end to end of the drama. Never would any noble sentiment thrill along the fibres of the soul in response to those Lydian measures. It was music to steep the being in soft, luxurious languors; to make all effort seem folly, all ardor madness, all steady toil impossible; — music to lap the mind in somnolence, in a careless consent to whatever was, were it but bodily ease and moral stagnancy. ”