I have never listened to The Barber of Seville without enjoying it, and there are times when I burn to carry Rossinian explorations farther, when I perhaps might take delight in Tancredi, with its still delicious, but now never sung, Di tanti palpiti, sacred to the memory of Giuditta Pasta, and La Cenerentola. Often, indeed, musing before the fire in my garret, I wistfully beg the gods to put it into somebody's head to play me the tunes I have read about so often, but which now I can hear only in my mind's ear through the formality of the printed scores: for example, Félicien David's Le Désert, that "ode-symphonie" which Hector Berlioz hailed as a chef-d'œuvre and which seemingly remained a chef-d'œuvre until the calmly sardonic Auber one day remarked, "I will wait until David gets off his camel." Either the epigram or the subsequent dismounting killed the piece, for now it is never played. But I should like to hear it: what could be quainter than Second Empire orientalism? Would Ingres's Odalisque come to life under the spell of David's harmonies and stand in ivory perfection in some sheik's harem, listening to the call of the muezzin, while the camels tramped the desert with their lumbering, swaying passing? What of Spontini's La Vestale? Would this faded score evoke the spirit of Rome, as Gluck's music evokes the soul of
Page:Red (1925).pdf/213
