"Libretto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... denying that the striking situation which Thackeray used with so much skill in his novel had already been utilized in the stirring romance of Durras and in the pathetic libretto of Royer, Vaez, and Scribe. Did Thackeray borrow it from the romance or from the libretto? Or did he reinvent it for himself, forgetting that it had already served? He was in Paris when Donizetti's tuneful music was first heard; and he was going to the opera as often as he could. He ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... of the libretto of Tempesta, just brought out in London, at the age of eighteen years, was placed under the care of M. Dupin, now the President of the French Legislative Assembly, to study the Roman law. Shortly after reaching his majority he began ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... served in the small salon which is kept in reserve for the King. It is the same room where King Gustave III. retired when he attended the ball which proved so fatal to him on the night of his assassination. The libretto of "Ballo in Maschera" by Verdi, is made on this subject, and ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... Cordova was singing the mad scene in Lucia for the last time in that season, and she had never sung it better. The Bride of Lammermoor is the greatest love-story ever written, and it was nothing short of desecration to make a libretto of it; but so far as the last act is concerned the opera certainly conveys the impression that the heroine is a raving lunatic. Only a crazy woman could express feeling in ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... cantata about the Britons and the Danes. There is a Druid priestess who sings of Cynthia and Endymion, and a chorus of jubilant Vikings. It is charmingly printed, and as a libretto for music ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... largely from the Comedie Humaine. His Sheriff libretto for Halevy's music at the Opera Comique in 1839 was a transmogrification of Master Cornelius. Balzac's Cornelius is Louis XI's money-lender, who lives with his sister in an old mansion, next to a house with the King's natural daughter, Marie de Sassenage, occupies with her husband, the Comte ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... thankful that she had bought the libretto of the opera of Louise when she and her mother had ventured out to see the tomb of Napoleon after the visit of Cousin Sally in the morning; and when they were taking their much needed rest before dressing ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (1913). Schreker's earlier opera, Der ferne Klang, I missed, but I enjoyed the later composition, charged as it is with fantasy, atmosphere, bold climaxes, and framing a legendary libretto. The ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... fantastic, mock-serious stories of the kind that were standardized by Mr. Dana's young men. He was a star reporter, pulling down his thirty-five per; but any first-class horoscoper would have allowed that Whitlock was destined to contribute to Puck and Judge, and probably attempt the libretto of a comic opera. He legged it on the newspaper for a while and then re-deserted, the same as most of the others, and went to Springfield to resume his studies. This was his first erratic move. If he had been a true journalist there wouldn't ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... write a comic opera to the artistic libretto, "Puritania," by C.M.S. McLellan, a brilliant satirist, who has since won fortune by his highly successful and frequently artistic burlesquery. The work won excellent praise in Boston, where it had one hundred performances. The work musically was not only conscientious, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... St. Mark's was Heinrich Schuetz, a great revolutionist in German music, whose chief work, and the first German opera, was "Dafne," written to a libretto by Rinuccini, possibly the same one used by Peri. When he was thirty-four, he married on June 1, 1619, a girl named Magdalena, who is described as "Christian Wildeck of Saxony's land steward's bookkeeper's daughter," which description Hawkins compares to that of "Pontius Pilate's wife's ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... music, whenever the character of the labor permitted. They seemed to sing the music for the music's sake alone, and were as heedless of the fitness of the accompanying words, as the composer of a modern opera is of his libretto. One middle aged man, with a powerful, mellow baritone, like the round, full notes of a French horn, played by a virtuoso, was the musical leader of the party. He never seemed to bother himself about ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Englishman is stirred by the name 'British,' the name 'English' irritates all Scotchmen, and the Irish are irritated by both alike. Our national anthem is a peculiarly flat and uninspiring specimen of eighteenth-century opera libretto and opera music. The little naked St. George on the gold coins, or the armorial pattern on the silver coins never inspired any one. The new copper coinage bears, it is true, a graceful figure of Miss Hicks Beach. But we have made it so small and ladylike that it has none of ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... An opportunity of escape being offered, Prince Igor seizes it, but Vladimir's dear heart is divided between passion and patriotism, and before he can make up his mind the chance of freedom is gone. A study of the so-called "libretto" showed that this was the only thing in the opera that bore any resemblance to a dramatic situation. Figure, therefore, my chagrin when I discovered that the character of Vladimir Igorievich had been cut clean out of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... wheat, satisfying to the generation of to-day, as it was to that first audience in Rome. We do not even know any longer why we love it, because in most ways it violates new and better rules of musical art, but we love it. Helen Keyes has written that "the libretto of 'Il Trovatore' is based on a Spanish drama written in superb verse by a contemporary of Verdi's, Antonio Garcia Gutierrez," and she relates a romantic story in connection with the Spanish play; the author was but seventeen years old when he wrote it and had been called to military duty, which ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... heavy pine whipsticks bent like bulrushes in the drivers' skilful hands, while a spray of dissevered hair, and sometimes a line of springing blood, followed each detonation—the libretto being in keeping. A few yards forward still, while both off wheels rose to the surface, and both near wheels sank till the naves burrowed in the ground; then the wagon swung heavily over ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Mozart, who was conducting, and kissed his hand; and Mozart stroked him on the head. We may guess that the leader knew what the music meant and that Mozart knew that he knew. Neither could put it into words and it is not put into words in the libretto. But the libretto need not be an obstruction to the meaning of the music if only the audience will not ask themselves what the libretto means. After Mozart's death the opera was successful, no doubt because the audience had given ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... at the Casino Theatre, N.Y., the following musical comedies: "The Girl and the Wizard," starring Sam Bernard; "Havana," with James T. Powers (made the American version of this libretto); "The Prince of Bohemia," with Andrew Mack, and "Mlle. Mischief," starring ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Bovary!—just as one can conceive conversely, of Flaubert's being well able to transform all his heroines into Scandinavian or Carthaginian women, and then to offer them to Wagner in this mythologised form as a libretto. Indeed, generally speaking, Wagner does not seem to have become interested in any other problems than those which engross the little Parisian decadents of to-day. Always five paces away from the hospital! All very modern problems, all problems which are at home in big cities! ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... my ear from the neighboring boxes when the orchestra was silent. I listened involuntarily; the occupants were not talking secrets, their conversation was in the domain of idle chat, that divides with the libretto the attention of the habitues ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... of his thought. How he castigates Donizetti's love of money and his sloth! how his whip scourges the immorality of the French opera, and his whole soul abhors the sensuality of that stage! how steadfastly he refuses to undertake the composition of an opera till the faultless libretto for which he patiently waited year after year could be prepared! We wish our religious societies would call out a few of the letters of this man and scatter them broadcast over the land: they would indeed be "leaves for the healing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... unrestrained sensuality. I was determined to understand the grave Shakespearean subject only in this sense." And in his "Autobiographical Sketch" he says: "I learned to love matter." In addition to this Wagner gives us the following synopsis of a (lost) libretto, "Die Hochzeit" ("The Wedding"), written at an earlier period: "A youth, madly in love with his friend's fiancee, climbs through the window into her bedroom, where the latter is awaiting the arrival of her lover; the fiancee struggles with the frenzied ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, liking the witty libretto as much as the bright, tuneful melodies. For the work of Caesar Franck, a gifted Belgian musician who died on the threshold of manhood, he had profound admiration, and was of opinion that had he lived ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... "A libretto for an operetta. Entitle it Theatrical Criticisms and set it to music and you will have such a show that the whole nation will flock to it ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... difference to be one row higher. It was more to the liking, after all. One felt more at home up here among the people. If one was thirsty, one could drink a glass of wine or beer being passed about by the libretto boys, and the music sounded ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... almost impossible to reproduce them in the forms of our poetry. Nor perhaps when they are strictly analysed will much be found, in many of them at least, of the material whereof modern poetry is made. They are, in fact, the libretto of a chant accompanied by dancing, and must have owed much to the melody and movement. In attempting to render the grand choric odes of the "Agamemnon," moreover, the translator is perplexed by corruptions of the text and by the various ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... the notion to whistle. But in the sanctity of our homes, around our firesides, in the front-parlor, where the melodeon or the newly hired piano has been set up, it is there that Herr Wagner's name will be revered, and his masterpiece repeated o'er and o'er. The libretto is not above criticism; it strikes us that there is not enough of it. The probability is that Herr Wagner ran out of libretto before he had got through with his music, and therefore had to spread out comparatively few words over ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... — N. booklet; writing, work, volume, tome, opuscule[obs3]; tract, tractate[obs3]; livret[obs3]; brochure, libretto, handbook, codex, manual, pamphlet, enchiridion[obs3], circular, publication; chap book. part, issue, number livraison[Fr]; album, portfolio; periodical, serial, magazine, ephemeris, annual, journal. paper, bill, sheet, broadsheet[obs3]; leaf, leaflet; fly leaf, page; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... while professing every sympathy, never hinted at the idea that was taking shape in his mind. When he left the bedroom at last, Ivan felt that, in spite of himself, he should get some sleep; for Nicholas had assured him solemnly that, when "The Boyar" should be finished, and the libretto, to be provided by Ostrovsky, properly polished, he would himself arrange for its production during the ensuing winter season. And while Ivan stood, dazed and silent, wondering if such a thing could really be, this great-hearted friend of Russia and Russian art, had seized him by the hand, left ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... if the tenor always satisfied our ideal of Apollo, and the soprano were always as sylph-like as she is described in the libretto, even then I should doubt the average operatic chorus being regarded by the connoisseur as a cheap and pleasant substitute for a bas relief from the Elgin marbles. The great thing required of that operatic chorus is experience. The young and giddy-pated the chorus ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... anxious, before he departed this Vale of Tears, to hear an opera from his pen, both for his benefit, and for the glory of his country. Chopin took this admonition to heart sufficiently to ask a friend to prepare for him a libretto; but that is as far as the project ever went. Chopin must have felt instinctively that his individual style of miniature painting would be as ineffective on the operatic stage, where bold, al fresco painting is required, as his soft and dreamy playing would have been had ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... This opera, only the libretto of which has ever been published, was given four nights during the centennial celebration of the siege of Saragossa, and was never performed elsewhere. The book is a mere scenario of the well-known Episodio nacional, and contains practically no spoken lines. It cannot be judged ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... operate once more in its normal fashion when we were told that the whole company would now "join hands and move around in a circle" to music. The entire jury sensed that the crucial moment had come. We saw boys and girls alternating, hand held in hand—and all to the undeniably secular libretto of "Looby-Loo." It was, moreover, noted with inward pain that many of the little feet actually left the ground. We adjourned to an adjacent fish stage to discuss the matter. I need not dilate on the vicissitudes of the session. It was clear that all but ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... are of two kinds, and one supplements the other. The human voice supplies the libretto, while the accompaniment is provided by a syncopated and tympanum-piercing ping-ping, suggestive of a giant ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... different matter. It has of late years received adventitious note from the fact of its selection by Wagner as a libretto; but it did not need this, and it was the admiration of every fit reader long before the opera appeared. The Percevale story, it may be remembered, lies somewhat outside of the main Arthurian legend, which, however, had hardly taken full ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... that were offered him for operatic composition. "I am afraid," said his father, who was quite anxious to see his famous son properly settled in life, "that Felix's censoriousness will prevent his getting a wife as well as a libretto." ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... philosophic doctrine of the concurring impulses of circumstance, or of natural laws, but rather the stupendously nonsensical notion of the Arabian kismet, that from the beginning of time every event was fore-arranged as in a fairy tale, and that all which is, is simply the acting out of a libretto written before the play began—a belief revived in the last century by readers of Leibnitz, who were truer than the great German himself to the consequences of his doctrine, which he simply evaded.[15] In coupling this humiliating and superstitious means of evading ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.' That's what the man said who wrote the libretto for the last set of Latin Verses we had to ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... singer and the actor. While called upon to demonstrate with proper melody of voice and expression the meaning of the music of the opera, he is also required to portray by suitable dramatic movements its corresponding meaning as found in the libretto. These remarks apply more particularly to those who constitute the dramatis personae in operatic presentation. Of course we do not forget the very important aid afforded by those who are included in the pleasing chorus, nor those who by instrumental accompaniment add to the charm of—in fact, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... you see, Aunt Wess'?" said Laura trying to explain. "And he forgives her. I don't know exactly. Look at your libretto." ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... full; the parish was magnificently organised; besides the clubs there were meetings of all sorts, very systematic visiting, a ladies' settlement, plays acted by children, in which Hugh took a prominent part both in composing the libretto and rehearsing the performances, coaching as many as ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sensual Don, the coarse-minded servant, the unwomanly, man-seeking Elvira, the vengeful Anna, the insignificant Ottavio, the light-headed and shallow-hearted Zerlina), and live only in the beautiful music which the prodigality of genius has wasted upon so poor a theme. Not even that libretto could degrade the pure, serious, and essentially innocent character of Mozart's conceptions; but, in turn, his refined musical conception has been unable to lift the subject from the mire of Da Ponte's delineation. We know that ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... consignment, The Cinderella Man, first arrived in this country in the form of a novel, and the difficulty it offered was that the struggling hero, Anthony Quintard, whose fate depended, in the absence of common-sense, on his winning a ten thousand dollar prize for an opera libretto, seemed to me, from samples of his work exhibited, to be an unlikely competitor. But I must say that when at the play I saw our Mr. NARES in his garret sucking at his pipe in that masterful manner and modifying what might so easily have been a too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... solid mass, and murmured good-mornings to each other; Mortimer told a long story from the top step; Dubois tried to talk of Balzac to Montgomery, who listened, puzzled and interested, fancying it was a question of a libretto; whilst Bret, till now silent as the dead, suddenly woke up to the conclusion that it would probably all end in a reduction of salaries. At last Dick appeared and called them into the presence of Mr. Cox. Whisky and water was on the table, and with the silky whiskers plunged in the black ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... lullaby is satirised in the orthodox libretto of Punch's Opera or the Dominion of Fancy, for Punch, having sung it, throws the child out ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... final publication, is well known. Its first publication (in parts) dated from 1836-37. About this time Dickens had another bad attack of stage-fever, and wrote a farce, "The Strange Gentleman," the libretto of an opera called "The Village Coquettes," and a comedy, "Is She His Wife?" more particularly perhaps for amateur representation, in which he was very fond of taking part. "Oliver Twist," a courageous attack on the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... sort of unconsciousness. She only knew that they were all acting an inevitable part, written for them in the great libretto of life. She never noticed that Steinmetz had left her side, that she was walking across ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Bemberg's opera "Elaine" (libretto by Paul Ferrier) presented at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, with Melba, Mantelli, J. and E. de Reszke, ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... Baron von Fouque. With the latter Hoffmann spent a happy fortnight in 1815 at his seat of Nennhausen near Rathenow; Hitzig was also of the party. In August of the following year the opera Undine was put upon the stage. Though Fouque's libretto did not pass without some adverse criticism, all voices were unanimous in praise of the music. Von Weber the musician especially expressed himself warmly in admiration of it, affirming that it was "one of the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... expect to reach the goal here so very soon but must prepare myself. A libretto of Scribe or Dumas I cannot set to music. If I ever do reach the right goal in this Parisian hunt, I shall not compass it in the common way; I must in that case create something new, and that I can achieve only ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator) |
