Music, men and manners in France and Italy, 1770 / Charles Burney

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text excerpt

At night the Comedie Italienne where there was a Harlequin piece, in which 2 thirds of the characters spoke Italian [...] Carlin the Harlequin wonderfully comic and entertaining - the rest, who sung now and then, but too French for me, Italian airs I could not much relish. [...] One of these pieces was new and meant as a comic opera in all its modern French form of Italian music (that is music composed in all the Italian Stile) to French words: no recitative, all the dialogue and narrative part being spoken, and this piece was as thoroughly d-d as ever piece was here. I used to imagine that a French audience durst not hiss to the degree I found they did tonight, indeed quite as much mixt with horse laughs as ever I heard at Drury Lane or Covent Garden. In short it was condemned in all the English terms except breaking the forms and the actors heads - instead of hissssssss - hishshsh. The author of the words, luckily for him or rather judiciously by him, lay concealed, but the composer M. de St Amant, is very much to be pitied, for a great deal of real good music was thrown away upon bad words and upon an audience not at all disposed, especially in the two last acts (there were 3,) to hear anything fairly.

excerpt from 'Music, men and manners in France and Italy, 1770 / Charles Burney' (224 words)

excerpt from 'Music, men and manners in France and Italy, 1770 / Charles Burney' pp. 12 (224 words)

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