of ancient music. She had her seven or eight famous theatres, among others the Argentina and the Aliberti for opera seria and the Capranica for opera buffa.
Above all, Rome, thanks to the attraction which her fame, her traditions and her eternal charm have always possessed for cultivated minds, had a public of rare musical competence, a truly sovereign public, which was aware of its own value, perhaps too much so, and pronounced its judgments without appeal,
"There are in Rome," writes Grétry, "a number of amateurs, of old abbés, who, by their wise criticism, restrain the young composer who allows himself to be carried away beyond the boundaries of his art. So when a composer has succeeded in Naples, Venice or even Bologna, they say to themselves: 'We must see him in Rome.'."
The performances of new operas in Rome were terrible ordeals for the composers; verdicts were promulgated which claimed to be final, and the judges brought to these verdicts the passion of the Italian temperament. The fight was on from the very beginning of the evening. If the music was condemned the hearers were capable of distinguishing between the composer and the singers; they hissed the maestro and applauded the artists. Or it was the singer who was hissed, while the composer was carried in triumph on to the stage.
bound to be the gradual decline of this noble establishment, the home of ancient music, as well as the graceful simplicity that made the reputation of this chapel." (Burney).—A friend of Burney's, who had spent twenty years in Rome, had warned him that the Papal choir no longer enjoyed its erstwhile superiority. Formerly the musicians attached to the Pope's service were the best paid. But "their salary has remained the same. Meanwhile, living has become dearer. The result is that the musicians are obliged, in order to live, to add another profession to that of singing, which loses thereby, while the musical execution in the theatres improves daily."
