Fidelio

“ At its close Rocco enters with the despondent Jacquino, shortly followed by Fidelio, who is very much fatigued. The love-episode is brought out in the famous canon quartet, "Mir ist so wunderbar," one of the most beautiful and restful numbers in the opera. Rocco promises Marcellina's hand to Fidelio as the reward of her fidelity, but in the characteristic and sonorous Gold song, "Hat man nicht auch Geld daneben," reminds them that money as well as love is necessary to housekeeping. ”

“ The libretto of Beethoven's opera was completely changed, Florestan being replaced by Jean Galéas, Pizarro by Duke Sforza. The Minister becomes Charles VIII., and Fidelio the Countess Isabelle; the whole story turned into a political intrigue, and Fidelio, the devoted wife, changed into a plotting and ambitious spouse.
A story in which a woman, actuated by her affection alone, nobly worked for her husband's deliverance, must have been thought too tame to put before a Parisian public, and so the stronger motives were introduced. ”

“ I will give you a glass of whisky, and we will smoke pipes, and you shall tell me your impressions—and then I will tell you why to-morrow I shall be so proud, why I show this emotion.'
II The Opera was Fidelio, that stately, splendid work, whose melody, if one may make a pictorial comparison, has something of that rich and sun-warm colour which, certainly, on the canvasses of Rubens, affects one as an almost musical quality. It offered brilliant opportunities, and the incomparable singer had wasted none of them. ”

“ It was but natural that such difficulties and vexations should turn the attention of the composer away from operatic production, but he undoubtedly hoped that better fortune would sometime attend his endeavors. In one respect, at least, he reaped encouragement from the experience with Fidelio, for it helped him to overcome his sensitiveness in regard to his deafness. On the margin of his sketch book in 1805 he writes: ‘Struggling as you are in the vortex of society, it is yet possible, notwithstanding all social hindrances, to write operas. ”

“ One must be an experienced and well-known musician to do it. They sing no chants in the service, but only chorales.
To-night is the last Royal Symphony Concert of this season, and of course I shall go. This wonderful orchestra carries me completely away. It is too marvellous how they play! such expression, such élan! I heard them give Beethoven's Leonora Overture last week in such a fashion as fairly electrified me. This overture sums up the opera of Fidelio, and in one part of it, just as the hero is going to be executed, you hear the post-horn sound which announces his delivery. ”

“ Yet, with her helplessness, she found herself amazingly without fear of Fidelia now. What a strange discovery to find her fear of Fidelia gone; for you can not fear one who no longer can hurt you; and Fidelia had taken away from Alice all that any one could. She had taken David and ended the meetings at the campus edge; ended their glances at each other, their sharing of plans, hopes, dreams; she had taken away the twenty-second of June, the wedding day! What a surprise to feel no fear of Fidelia! ”

“ David said. "Just sun and water and things like that made her happy. Sarah," he said, "she'll be the same."
"Sarah!" Alice repeated. "She's no Sarah, David. She's Fidelia, Fidelia! Every time you look at her, every time you hear her voice, you'll think it, and so will I. She's Fidelia! We'll say it, and call her Fidelia from now on."
"Alice, can you bear to?"
"Bear it, my boy!—Fidelia, the only Fidelia who ever could take you away from me, is gone, David; and Fidelia who will hold us together is come."
He closed his wife in his arms.
"No wife in the world could love her as you, Alice." ”

“ Here was the place where the students lived, Fidelia recognized—ten or twenty girls together in one house and as many men rooming in the next.
They would prove to have come from everywhere and they would be no ordinary people; for each lighted window here must represent a separate and definite will and ambition of some one—at least of a parent or a brother or sister or friend for each some one up there on the other side of every window blind; each glow suggested a self-denial, a sacrifice and a determination of the various sorts with which Fidelia had become familiar. ”

“ Fidelia grew uneasy under his peculiarly persistent observation; she saw him once speak to Dorothy Hess and ask a question and then peer at her again. When he vanished, she had the feeling that he was watching her from behind. ”

“ There had been a mistake years ago about Bolton, who had had no such life as Fidelia, yet who was alive when people said he was dead. There was a mistake; and when David drove to the door and came up from the car with a child of four years in his arms, Alice knew the mistake for what it was. Fidelia lived but she was a child again.
She had clear, white skin and dark, red hair and large brown eyes and red lips and a lovely, provoking nose like Fidelia's; and, her arm about David's neck, she clung as only a child of Fidelia's could. She was vivid and warm and she loved life. ”

“ He was light-minded and happy. He thought that his shore self would hardly know this Dave Herrick who walked the floe with Fidelia Netley. The boy, who had played with her in the ice caves, would know him; this David Herrick was that boy who now knew Fidelia much better. They had talked together a thousand things; and with each, Fidelia had more delighted him.
She said nothing profound; that was it! She never even tried to; the idea of being profound could not occur to her. She thought and said wholly natural, agreeable things, not like any one else. ”

“ And the voice of the enchanted chasm told Fidella of Alois’ true faith, of the enchanter and the water of forgetfulness, and of the youth’s journey to the court of the Kingdom of the Fields.
“Ah, me! Is there no way in which the spell may be broken?” said Fidella.
“In the wood beyond the world,” answered the torrent, “under trees which are older than the stars, the fountain of memory pours its crystal stream. If the youth shall drink a golden goblet of this water, the chain of the spell will break.” ”

“ Fidelia said, "besides what I do."
"Are you ashamed of what you think?"
"It's what I think," she replied and she made her book safe by raising herself slightly and thrusting it under her thigh and resting her leg upon it.
So she lost the pity she had roused in him. He felt himself defied and he said: "Everything must be pleasant and easy for a man and his wife in these days. If God did not ordain that the giving of life be wholly convenient and cause no interruption in pleasure, so much the worse for God or at least for the sacred function of giving life. ”

“ Naturally she did this; she had taught him to dance; and this unconscious reminder of their first days together used to stir tenderness. Now he thought of Fidelia, warm, all alive but following, docile to him.
Alice tried to talk. She said: "Don't you like the music?" He replied: "It's great." ”

“ This room of hers high above the water and with wide, pleasant windows to the east and south was a particularly delightful "living-room" with its soft, blue rug and big, blue lounge, with pretty table and a desk and chairs painted that hue of gray which is gay and made more cheerful by little lines and designs in brighter color. There were bookshelves and books, a parchment-shaded lamp and a small, beautiful grand piano which was open. It was always open and with music on the rack. A dozen times a day Fidelia slipped into the piano seat and played; she loved to play but not to practice. ”

“ How could Myra feel so sure that Fidelia "was finished" for Alice?
Fidelia's secret had proved to be as serious as Myra could have suspected; and it was true that Fidelia was gone away to be the wife of another man. But she was not "finished" for Alice; and would she ever be?
Myra seemed to imagine that David and Alice could, if they would, ignore his three and a half years with Fidelia; she seemed to fancy that Fidelia had not changed him and her and that they had power to put themselves back where they were before Fidelia came to college on that snowy, winter night. ”

“ Alice did not let herself imagine that Fidelia had left him of her own free will and at her own choice; far less did Alice dream that Fidelia had departed to go to another man. No; Alice had to allow her first exultation to be complete, so she imagined Fidelia going away because she had found that she had come to her end with David; and Alice had to allow herself to believe that she had much to do with this. ”

“ Soon the house was quiet; they were all gone, except Myra who for a time sat in the dark beside her and then lay down on the bed. Myra went to sleep. Alice did not.
Sometimes she imagined Fidelia and David both lost; sometimes she supposed Fidelia lost and David safe; and sometimes Fidelia safe and David had been drowned. But she believed none of this; she believed them both safe and together; and consequently, while she waited, she tried to recast her life; but she could not.
How she depended upon David! Every plan, every purpose, every hope, every dream was hers only with him. ”

“ Every one knew he had been married; so his father must have told them; his father would not depute to any one else the task of telling his congregation that his son secretly had married a girl whom the family had not yet met. But Fidelia amazed them. No one was prepared to see David Herrick bring home a girl like her.
"They're nice people here," Fidelia said to him, when she and he walked on alone.
"Anybody ought to be nice to you!" David replied. She was kept flushed by the many meetings and the warmth of the walk. "They all like you!" ”

“ Yet the record emphasized her consciousness of certain tendencies such as the greater and greater infrequency of David's and her visits to Itanaca. As a consequence of the cessation of their visits, father Herrick was taking every opportunity to come to Chicago; he had arrived in the city on church business yesterday and looked in upon David at his office. This morning father Herrick was coming to call upon Fidelia.
"He's simply going to make himself feel more terribly about me," Fidelia said. "That's what he always does." ”

“ There rang in Alice's throbbing brain, words which Myra had spoken in warning before Fidelia had ever seen David. "She can't help being an enemy." That was what Myra had said; and Fidelia could not help being an enemy of Alice but she did not mean to be an enemy. Fidelia had no more planned to stay out on the floe and draw David to her than she had planned to sit in the sun on her first morning in class. She did such things because her nature made her sit in the sun and dare the starlit cold ”

“ Alice heard from David that he was coming home at noon. Mr. Jessop was here with news that Fidelia had died in England, David had said and had added he had much more to tell her. Fidelia was dead. It was a statement which bore to Alice no reality. It was wholly different from the news which had come that Bolton was dead. Never had he been more than a name and a statement of fact when he lived; it required nothing more than another statement of fact to let you know that he was dead. But Fidelia bore the flower of life itself; to think of Fidelia was to think of color, warmth and stir ”

“ And the golden coach, gleaming great golden gleams in the pools of light, rolled over the hills and far away.
It was twilight now and, in the little house in the wood, Fidella lifted the bridal wreath from her head, lit candles, and sank into a wing chair by the burnt-out embers of the fire. So great was her trust in Alois, that never a questioning doubt of him raised its voice in her heart.
“Some evil thing has surely come to pass,” said faithful Fidella. “Alas! what may it be?” And for two days she walked to and fro between the window and her loom, vainly hoping for a sign. ”

“ Upon the furniture, upon the curtains, upon the carpet, everywhere one looked closely were proofs of repeated repair and care for cheap, outworn things.
Fidelia's eyes filled. She put down her packages and one of her hands sought David's. As he felt her clasp, he hardened his hand within hers to oppose her pity for his people.
"They don't care whether they have things or not," he whispered almost fiercely in his pride. ”

“ Dave couldn't imagine it; her splendid body must always be warm.
It was for Fidelia a night when she felt like going to the point of exhaustion, when she gloried in giving herself to the sensation of spending her strength and feeling how much more she had to spend. She enjoyed this sensation particularly in company; and in David Herrick she found endurance equal to her own.
Her impulse of self-reproach at bringing him here, had passed; he was with her because he wanted to be, instead of being with Alice Sothron in that warm house now lost amid the lights of the distant shore. ”

“ Filelfo deserves commemoration among the greatest humanists of the Italian Renaissance, not for the beauty of his style, not for the elevation of his genius, not for the accuracy of his learning, but for his energy, and for his complete adaptation to the times in which he lived. ”

“ And now it was the marriage morn; great clouds fled over the sun, chilling and quieting the world, yet every now and then breaking asunder and dappling the broad land with spots of sunshine, which gleamed for a moment and were gone. Dressed in her pretty country finery, and with a nosegay of posies at her throat, Fidella stood by her window waiting to hear the thunder of arriving hoofs and Alois’ joyous hail. ”