On one occasion I heard his [Paer's] Camilla at the second opera house, the "Comic opera," with which qualification its gruesome theme was in altogether too glaring contrast. The degeneracy of that wretched passion, jealousy, was here so crudely depicted, so distressing was the spectacle of the virtuous and slandered wife, starving, through the design of her deluded husband, in a subterranean vault, that the offense to the sight and to the feelings outweighed the pleasure the music might have provided. Un­luckily for Paer, this grotesque subject, if I may so express myself, had occasioned a most favorable display of his musical talents, so that one was at once attracted and repelled. << less