particularly a duet in the "Elisa e Claudio" of Mercadante. The finale of the first act recommends itself to notice by qualities of the highest order. The sestet embodied in it is certainly one of the most dramatic concerted pieces ever written. Can there be anything more piercing than this praise sung by Edgardo

"T'amo, ingrata, t'amo ancor."

Each word is a sob of grief, which stirs the very depths of the soul. In this beautiful sestet the voices are grouped with a marvellous art. Donizetti often reproduced afterward the harmonic combination of this admirable composition. The stretta of the finale is full of vigour. Who has forgotten the imprecation which Rubini launched forth with such fury?

"Maledetto sia l'instante!"

In the second act we find again a very beautiful duet, and afterwards the final air, which the dying Edgardo sings under the turrets of his well-beloved. Never have the chaste voluptuousness and divine hopes of a soul aspiring to a better world been better expressed than in this delicious air.* The celebrated tenor Moriani drew all Italy after this air, which he sang in a most remarkable style. In listening to him we heard a melody of Plato sung by a Christian soul.

"La Favorite" is not an opera altogether as well composed and as complete as that which we have just examined. In style it is very unequal: vulgar ideas often intrude themselves among the noblest inspirations, and mar by their presence that unity of design which is the stamp upon works of the highest order of beauty. The romance, " Un Ange, une femme inconnu" in the first act is touching. The duet between Fernand and Leonor does not commend itself but by the allegro, "Tu ma seule ami," the sentiment of which is quite pleasing. The romance, "Pour tant d'amour," which King Alphonse sings in the third act, affords an agreeable opportunity for the display of a virtuoso's power. The andante of Lonor's air, "O mon Fernand," is unquestionably in a severe style; but the allegro which follows is but a mean cabaletta. The finale to the third act, as well as the chorus which precedes and prepares it, is vigorous, and produces a fine dramatic effect. The dancing music is free and elegant. It is in the fourth act, written at Paris in a propitious moment, that the composer has recovered all the tenderness of his genius. The chorus of monks which opens the scene, "Les cieux remplisse d'enticelles," is remarkable for its religious character. The romance, "Ange si pur," ," which was written for a score left incomplete ("Le Duc d'Albe") is a ravishing inspiration. As to the final duet between Leonor

* We cannot allow this sentence to pass without pointing out its absurdity, and the truly French cha racter of its sentiment.-TRANSLATOR,

and Ferdinand, an daleve all, the which they sing intertwined in a passionate embrace, "Cest mon rêve perdu

Qui rayonne, et m'enivre;"

it is one of the most beautiful bursts of passion which has found expression in music.

The comic part of Donizetti's works is much less important, and, what is more, much less original than his serious operas. The imitation of Rossini is flagrant, and appears on 99 every page. In "L'Esire d'Amore" there is, in the first act, a very pretty duet between the charlatan Dulcamara and the young peasant Nemorino; and we have, beside, the finale, which is a charming composition, full of brilliant details, and marked by a sweet and graceful gaiety. In the second act there is also a very pleasing duet between the charlatan and the lively Adina, and the pretty romance which all the world knows, "Una furtiva lagrima.”

"Don Pasquale" is far from having the same distinction as "L'Elisire d'Amore;" but it contains, nevertheless, two duets full of spirit, a charming quartette, and a delicious serenade, which has become popular.

Donizetti's instrumentation is brilliant, sometimes vigorous, but rarely original. It is distinguished neither by a happy choice of quality of tone, nor by striking modulation, nor by the novelty of its harmonies.

We see plainly that he treats the orchestra too slightingly, that he writes too hastily, without giving himself time to arrange his colours and combine his tints. He understands to a marvel the art of accompanying a voice without fatiguing it; but he uses to abuse the formulas of composition, trite progressions, the crescendo, noisy and vulgar rhythms, and instruments which overtask the nervous sensibility, and intoxicate the ear at the expense of true emotion and intellectual pleasure. Donizetti was too hard pressed to live and to produce, to await in silence the happy hour of inspiration. Coming into the world some years after Rossini, Donizetti suddenly took possession of the realm of this all-powerful master, whose ideas and forms he worked over with a charming naïvete and skill. The success of Bellini, who entered the field about 1827, made an equal impression upon him, and under the double influence of these opposing minds he wrote " Anna Bolena," in which it is impossible not to recognize the overshadowing reverie, the sad and tender style of melody which characterize the composer of "Il Pirata," "La Sonnambula," and "I Puritani." Ripened by experience, in the full vigour of his years and his talent, Donizetti freed himself finally from external influences, and in a blessed moment be wrote a master-piece, "Lucia di Lammermoor," in which he has united his happiest inspirations with his best style. All that he wrote afterward bears the impress, more or less marked, of that charming work, which is the fruit of the literature and the musical progress which manifested

in their scope; and, as he does not know how to vary their character by the art of elabora tion, he arrives quickly at a mannerism, the sure sign of poverty. Verdi strives deliberately after dramatic effect: we see that he often devotes himself to it; and if he sometimes succeeds in attaining it, he does so only by a sudden and boisterous explosion which bursts from him, and not by a progressive succession of graduated effects in the style of the masters. He often abuses the unison; when the unison, being in its nature an easy and monotonous form, requires to be used with great discretion, and only thus when it is desired to give repose to an ear fatigued with an affluent harmony. It is thus that the skilful host of a hotel in the middle of a splendid banquet brings forward simple viands to refresh the overtasked palates of the guests.

sweetness he possessed, and whose languor- |liancy or power; but they are quite constrained breathing melody he loved to reproduce. This affinity is most remarkable in "La Sonnambula," the score which best expressed the characteristic traits of the young composer, and which might be called the offspring of Nina, filled as it is with the maternal sorrow. A musician of charming genius, which an imperfect education had but partially developed, Bellini not only found vent for his emotions in exquisite and original melodies, but also in striking harmonies, as in the beautiful quartette in "I Puritani," the best written composition which he has left us. His instrumentation, generally feeble, is nevertheless not without a certain character. He borrows for the most part the orchestration of Rossini, but sometimes that of Weber, as may be remarked in the introduction to "I Puritani." His works, lacking variety, and rather elegiac than truly dramatic in character, are distinguished by a sombre, restrained declamation which is the exponent of a real emotion, by melodies somewhat undeveloped, and which are without the luxuriant eplendour of Rossini's, but which stir us profoundly because they are a genuine outpouring of the soul, and not the production of artifice. Born in a happy country, his childhood's ear enchanted by those plaintive melodies which the Sicilian shepherds have sung for centuries, his heart filled with that serene melancholy which is inspired by a land on which the sun lingers, by the vast shadows of the evening, and the far-stretching horizon of the sea, a melancholy the expression of which is found in Theocritus, in certain madrigals written in the sixteenth century by Gesualdo, but above all in Pergolese and Paisiello-Bellini mingled these innate accents of his reverieloving southern genius with the mysterious and pantheistic aspirations of English and German literature, and thus formed an exquisite whole, full of charm and mystery.

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The talent of M. J. Verdi, the latest born of the Italian composers, and whose operas are nowadays the delight of his countrymen, is of a kind entirely opposed to that of Bellini. Born in the environs of Milan, it is said that he learned the rudiments of music of an uncle, a curé of the village, who exercised him at an early age in picking out chords on the organ of the little church in the place. His luck and experience did the rest. The first work which made him known was Nabuco," ," which was performed at Milan with very great success. He has since written about a dozen operas, which have been received with enthusiasm in all the towns of Italy, except Naples. In the country of Rossini they sing only the music of Verdi. His strident melodies resound through all the public places. The composer of "Nabuco," Ernani," "I due Foscari," and of "I Lombardi," which, arranged for the opera at Paris under the title of "Jerusalem," obtained but a partial success, unites to a disposition somewhat sad an imagination more elevated than fruitful. His ideas are not without bril

Verdi's orchestration is at once noisy and empty, either too sonorous or too meagre. He affects to accompany the voice by the most vulgar instruments, such, for instance, as the cornet à piston, the excessive éclát of which, joined to the bouncing rhythms which the composer loves, is more suited to a masked ball than a serious drama. written for the voice, which he puts through His operas, badly the most violent exercise, have had a fatal effect upon the art of singing; and his talent, wanting in flexibility and grace, and which lives upon the bad traditions of the German and French schools, must be considered the talent of a decadence.

As to Giovanni Pacini, the composer of "Niobe," "L'Ultimo Giornio di Pompeia," and "Safo," and of thirty other operas more or less known, he is but a facile imitator of Rossini. There remains Mercadante, a learned and skilful musician, but to whom Heaven has denied Rossini's foot-steps, and tasked his ingenuity the boon of originality. Having also walked in to reproduce the Bellini's style, we see him now emulating Verdi's gloomy glory. "Elisa e Claudio," his first success, remains his best work.

The character of the Italian school, it will be seen, is much modified since Rossini ceased to write. The influence of foreign literature and of new theories of dramatic art has excited composers in the land of Cimarosa to strive for the expression of violent passion, to neglect the portrayal of tender and delicate sentiments for that of the sombre passions of the soul. A sort of mysticism has clouded the serene imagination of the Italians. Their melodies, more serious, haps, are less elaborated, less brilliant, and of more profound and tender in sentiment, peran inferior style to those of Rossini. The duets, the trios, and in general all the concerted pieces The art of handling a theme, and following it are designed upon a more constrained model. out to all its natural consequences by the linking together of episodes and modulations, has been neglected. Instrumentation has become

coarser, and has no longer that amplitude and elegant variety which we admire in "Otello" and "Semiramide." In the hands of the successors of Rossini the art of music is plainly degraded; and dramatic expression is impoverished, having assumed the exaggeration and the monotony of melo-drama. The Italian opera is now nothing more than a genre pic

ture.

In the midst of this state of things Donizetti appeared. A musician more skilful, more vigorous, but less original than Bellini, with a talent more fruitful and varied than either Mercadante

or Verdi, the superior of Pacini and all the composers of that order, Donizetti has a claim to the first rank after that supreme position which belongs to genius. He will be classed in the history of the art immediately after Rossini, whose most brilliant disciple he was; and he will live to posterity by his best work, "Lucia," one of the most beautiful scores of our day. To characterize at once the nobility of his soul and the tenderness of his genius, it needs only to write under his portrait these words from the last air in " Lucia:" "O bell' alma inamorata."

THE MENDICANT.

A STORY OF BRITTANY.

(Translated from the French by Anne T. Wilbur.)

I had left Pontrieux very late, taking a cross- | At last I found myself at the entrance of a road which I had formerly travelled, and which, according to my calculations, would permit me to reach Treguier before nightfall; but I soon perceived that my reminiscences had misled me. Night surprised me before I had accomplished a third of my journey, and I began to fear losing myself among the intricate paths which the darkness made it more difficult to recognize. To complete my embarrassment, the wind rose, and the snow began to fall.

I had just reached a table-land covered with heath, which the storm swept without an obstacle, and where it was vain to seek a shelter. Wrapt in my goat-skin cloak, with my head down and body bent to struggle against the wind, I was following with difficulty the uneven path. Whichever way my glance turned, it perceived only a white and shifting snow which confounded the sky and the earth. At intervals the tempest seemed to pause, the wind ceased, the noise of a cascade was heard in the distance, or the plaintive howls of hungry wolves; then the tempest arose anew, increased, and all was soon lost in its terrific roar.

I had, at first, struggled with a sort of proud pleasure against the whirlwinds which followed each other like waves; but, insensibly, fatigue and cold diminished my ardour, and I began to seek around me the means of procuring a shel

ter.

Fortunately the path I had until then followed began to descend and bury itself in a narrow gorge. Some naked trees showed before me their confused outlines, and, as I approached them, the storm seemed to become more distant,

hollow, where its whistling, deadened by the mountains, reached me only as an echo, and in which the snow was falling less thickly. I raised my head, happy to be able to breathe at my ease. Besides, I knew by experience that the valley unmistakably announced habitations. The lavoir (place for washing), an isolated oven, soon confirmed me in this hope, and, at a few paces' distance, I perceived a hamlet, composed of a dozen cottages. The first which I approached was dark and empty; but, guided by the sound of voices, I reached another, standing apart, and, opening the door, found myself in the midst of a Breton filerie (an assemblage of women for spinning).

A dozen women, crouched on their heels around a fire, in which was burning a heap of broom, were twirling their spindles, conversing and singing. Some children, lying at their feet, were asleep, and a young mother, seated at the nost distant corner of the hearth, was nursing her infant and murmuring a cradlesong.

At my entrance all turned. I had stopped on the threshold to shake off the snow, with which I was covered, and deposited my staff beside the door, according to the custom. The mistress of the house understood that I asked shelter.

"The blessing of God on those present," said I, advancing to meet her.

"And upon you," replied she, with Armorican brevity.

"There is a fall upon the earth, and the wolves themselves could not find their way,”