"Opera" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sinister and tragic misfeasance. In that city, where, if it may be said with respect, there has existed from of old a fashionable circle not convinced of its own gentility and insisting the more rigorously on minor decorum, Lincoln went to the opera, and history still deplores that this misguided man went there and sat there with his large hands in black kid gloves. Here perhaps it is well to say that the educated world of the Eastern States, including those who privately deplored ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... costume of his kind, the short vest and many-colored stockings of the peasants of the opera comique, the three horns turned backward, the red wig with its turned-up queue and its butterfly on the end. He was a young man, but alas, his face, whitened with flour, was already seamed with vice. Planting himself before the public, and opening his mouth in a silly grin, he showed bleeding ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... heathenism deriv'd to us, Does not the Whore of Babylon ride Upon her horned beast astride Like this proud dame, who either is 765 A type of her, or she of this? Are things of superstitious function Fit to be us'd in Gospel Sun-shine? It is an Antichristian opera, Much us'd in midnight times of Popery, 770 Of running after self-inventions Of wicked and profane intentions; To scandalize that sex for scolding, To whom the Saints are so beholden. Women, who were our first Apostles 775 Without whose aid we had been lost else; Women, that left no stone ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Donizetti and delight in Lecocq and Sullivan. In no respect is the national pride so utterly forgotten as in music. We give to all schools a fair hearing. The great German masters are household words: the national music of every land is welcome. We have been learning to like Italian opera at an insane cost; we have kindly winked at the follies of opera-bouffe; probably nowhere in the world are the intellectual depths of a German symphony and the passionate declamation of an Italian recitative more thoroughly appreciated. This is the natural musical exposition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... pawing savagely, worthy representative of all the horrors it typified, and which she explained with maddening perspicuity. That night, when papa tore himself away from the club room at one o'clock, and met mamma on the doorstep—just coming home from a supper at Delmonico's after an opera party—they were ascending the stairs, when frantic cries drove from her ears the echoes of 'Traviata's' witching strain. Thinking only a conflagration would justify the din, papa threw up the hall sash and shouted 'fire!' and the police sounded the alarm, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a society lady, or a society man, and you have accepted an invitation from a woman friend to motor out to her country place and dine and spend the night—and suppose when the day arrives, you are offered a box at the opera, that night, to hear Caruso? As this appeals to you much more than the other, you send a wire to the country at the last minute, pretending an indisposition, and go to the opera. What of the woman friend—who had made special efforts and invited certain ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... a photograph of her in her cuirass and helmet, and often looked at it when he was not too busy with something else. He had even championed his goddess against Lucia, when she pronounced that Wagner was totally lacking in knowledge of dramatic effects. To be sure she had never seen any Wagner opera, but she had heard the overture to Tristram performed at the Queen's Hall, and if that was ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... opera singer, who appeared in the Victor Talking Machine and New York City. Always had a cold or a sore throat, a condition which assisted materially in filling the house. Like all his contemporaries, C. has been sued for divorce ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... friendship and confidence and meet with a scurvy return, 'tis not anger nor aversion it produces in me, but a complete indifference. Was I to hear tomorrow that Mr Wortley had a train of charmers as long as Captain Macheath's in the "Beggars' Opera," 'twould not inflict a pang, so long as he kept within the bounds of prudence and family decency; and indeed, 'tis as my poor sister Gower said to me more than once: "'Tis you, sister, for a merciless good sense that makes you accommodate ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... her father rather more than one would have expected, made him listen to opera records which drove him to distraction, talked to him of nothing, and tried to be a little sister to the afflicted in a pink-satin and ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... he knew; and a very nice thing it seemed to be to drive among all the grandees, and to show his handsome face at the window, and bow and smile to his acquaintance. Then it appeared to be the fashion to wrap one's self in a tiger-skin rug, and to look at life through an opera-glass, and old Time had kindly put one of ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... denied the right to profit by his own discovery, and so, though the glory of the Twins was envied, their right to luxuriate in it was seldom questioned. They were seen in all sorts of prominent and expensive places—at the opera, at the horse-show, on the golf links, and were very much envied and admired,—envied by other young men that were trying to do as they had done, but not succeeding; admired by multitudes of young women who felt pretty sure that to "have things," ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... her and Gibson together at all sorts of places, on a yacht cruising around Catalina island, on the links at a country club, a ball at the Ambassador, racing along the coast road to Santa Barbara in Gibson's expensive car, at the opera and supper later. Then thought of the patch on his own trousers. Oh, what ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... extremely pretty, and universally allowed to be so; her ladyship was much taken notice of in public, and my mother knew that young men are vain of having their mistresses and wives admired by our sex. But my mother calculated ill as to my particular character. To the Opera and to Ranelagh, to the Pantheon, and to all the fashionable public places of the day, I had had the honour of attending Lady Anne; and I had had the glory of hearing "Beautiful!" "Who is she?"—and "Who is with her?" My vanity, I own, had been flattered, but no further. My imagination was ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... but I'll tell you what to do. Mr. Hull has gone out to the opera to-night, and if we go back to the store we can be there by ourselves. Let's go and do what we have not done in a long, long time—sit down together like the two brothers we once were, and talk over old scenes, old friends, and old times; will ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... foremost figure stood looking at Langdon. Occasionally she used an opera glass, which, from time to time, she passed back over her shoulder ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... very far away, two hundred yards at most, in the omnibus running between the Bastille and the Madeleine, which lumbered peacefully along behind its three horses, crossing the Place de l'Opera and going down the Boulevard des Capucines. Two tall fellows in bowler hats stood talking on the conductor's platform. On the top, near the steps, a little old man sat dozing: it ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... devices and the elegant transparencies which, on the restoration of peace and the commencement of Prussian liberty, are to decorate Potsdam and Charlottenburg festeggianti. What shades of his armed ancestors of the House of Brandenburg will the committee of Illumines raise up in the opera-house of Berlin, to dance a grand ballet in the rejoicings for this auspicious event? Is it a grand master of the Teutonic order, or is it the great Elector? Is it the first king of Prussia, or the last? or is the whole long line (long, I mean, a parte ante) to appear like ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that they were established in luxurious quarters in the capital of pleasure; that was exactly where they naturally would be established in view of going to pieces. Moreover didn't she mention that Mr. Moreen and the others were enjoying themselves at the opera with Mr. Granger, and wasn't that also precisely where one would look for them on the eve of a smash? Pemberton gathered that Mr. Granger was a rich vacant American—a big bill with a flourishy heading and no items; so that one of Paula's ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... sick within him. He looked up and saw a little procession of late revellers rushing out to the last suburban train, the girls leaving a trail of orris perfume and a vision of dainty opera cloaks. One of the men was a city friend of his. Dunham half envied him his unperturbed mind. To be sure, he would not get back to the city till three in the morning, but he would have no visions of robberies and fair lunatics and hard ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... your art," says Esmond to Addison; "the murder of the campaign is done to military music, like a battle at the opera, and the virgins shriek in harmony, as our victorious grenadiers march into their villages. Do you know what a scene it was? what a triumph you are celebrating, what scenes of shame and horror were enacted, over which the commander's genius presided as calm as though he didn't belong to our ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... sombre, enshrined, embosomed in those purple clouds; and momently ran lightning-forks like rapiers through the growing mass. Everything around, meanwhile, was quiet in the grass-grown streets. The only sound was a high, clear boy's voice chanting an opera-tune. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... in keeping with life generally," he answered. "In a comic opera one thing is not more idiotic than another. Yes, Monsieur Laripet, we will give them Funiculi, Funicula. I once drove in coffin nails to that tune in Verona. Now we will set people eating to it in Aix-les-Bains—we, Monsieur Laripet, you and I, who ought to be the petted minions ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... he did not like it quite so much when the demon of restoration and renovation invaded his own quarters, such as the Butte des Moulins, and all that densely populated district through which the splendid Avenue de l'Opera now runs. The effect of all this was to drive the workman into the already crowded quarters at the barriers, such as La Gare, St. Lambert, Javel, and Charonne, where, according to the last statistics of the Annuaire, the increase was at the rate of 415 per 1,000. Of course the ill health ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... here ensued; her ladyship hated cottages and curricles and good dinners as much as her husband despised fancy balls, opera boxes, and chariots. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... tone of a clarionet tootling a love passage in grand opera, "me and Rosalie invites you all to the Bublic Hall Thursday night to ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... admitted to that degree. Of all the carriages that leave the arch of the Opera House, not one turns eastward, and when the little thief is caught in the empty market-place no one in black- and-white or rose-coloured evening dress blocks the way by pausing with a hand upon the carriage door to help or condemn—though Lady Charles, to do her justice, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... metropolitan paper, a county paper, monthly magazines (of which they are the best readers), perhaps a piano or an organ, more likely, now, a phonograph, which reproduces, if they choose, what is heard in Paris or in concerts or the grand opera; reproductions of pieces of statuary or paintings in the Louvre; and either a fast driving horse or an automobile. They are often within easy reach of a city by train, and the wives or daughters know the fashions of Paris and begin to follow the modes as quickly as ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless streams of indolent and voluptuous life; when the upper class spend, and the middle class make; when the ball-room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the School for Scandal; when the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers and fiddlers—creatures hatched from gold, as the dung-flies from the dung-swarm, and buzz, and fatten, round the hide of the gentle Public In the cant phase, it was "the London season." And happy, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... be confessed that, in spite of the many pleasures indicated as belonging to this training, one gets very tired of it, just as one might tire of living in Arcadia, if, as is probable, there were no Club or Italian Opera there. It is with considerable joy, therefore, that one hails the approach of the race when it is still a week off; but this feeling is apt to be modified as the days draw on after that. "Funk," of course, attacks everybody ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... which was one of its chief qualities. Neither the Contessa nor Bice had been much impressed by that fine view of the performance. Madame di Forno-Populo, indeed, had swept the audience with her opera-glass, and paid very little attention to the stage. She had yawned at the most important moments. When the curtain fell she had woke up, looking with interest for visitors, as it appeared, though very few visitors had come. Bice was put ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... in the autumn of this year. At the beginning of the next it was followed by a second part, called Reproof, in which he took an occasion of venting his resentment against Rich, the manager of Covent Garden, with whom he had quarrelled concerning an opera, written by him for that theatre, on the story of Alcestis. In consequence of their dispute the piece was not acted; nor did he take the poet's usual revenge by ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... to the great man than a troupe of performing collies, but his artistic sense demanded the best, and when it was not forth-coming he felt the same annoyance as you or I would feel if arrayed in purple and fine linen we adorned a box at the opera with our presence, covered with as many diamonds upon it as possible, to find a street singer deputising for a ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... in town all the autumn. At the opening of the Opera House, on the 20th of November, Mrs. Yates, an actress whom he held in great esteem, delivered a poetical exordium of his composition. Beauclerc, in a letter to Lord Charlemont, pronounced it very good, and predicted that it would soon be in all the papers. It does not appear, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... potentate motioned us forward. A bending waiter put us in our places. Orchids decorated our table. An extraordinarily expensive orchestra celebrated our arrival with strains from a popular opera then raging. People all around glanced at us and immediately away again. I suppose we showed by our appearance that we were the possessors neither of millions nor ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... for satire. Their position, too, in practical life was one that they had continually to fight for. In such a temper they wrote and spoke and described one another. Pog- gio's works alone contain dirt enough to create a prejudice against the whole class—and these 'Opera Poggii' were just those most often printed, on the north as well as on the south side of the Alps. We must take care not to rejoice too soon, when we meet among these men a figure which seems immaculate; on further inquiry there is always a danger of meeting with some foul charge, which, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... is what I thought," Miss Betsey said, emphatically. "He takes it from his father, rather than his mother. She, I believe, had some energy and snap She was a chorus singer in some opera, and I did not like the match, though I now believe she was too good for Hugh. And now for Archie's wife, Daisy they call ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... mingled freely with these materialistic Romeos, who preferred the comforting cuisine to the fiery and seductive cocktails of "The Opera" on ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... melancholy, and neither went to see the opera, nor any of the other diversions of the Carnival; nay, he was proof against the temptations of all ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... blockhead in the way. Thee shall the patriot, thee the courtier taste, And every year be duller than the last; Till raised from booths, to theatre, to court, Her seat imperial Dulness shall transport. 300 Already Opera prepares the way, The sure forerunner of her gentle sway: Let her thy heart, next drabs and dice, engage, The third mad passion of thy doting age. Teach thou the warbling Polypheme[373] to roar, And scream thyself as none e'er scream'd before! To aid our cause, if ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... acquired by fraud and violence might be employed. "Gold," says Christopher Columbus, in his last letter* (Lettera rarissima data nelle Indie nella isola di Jamaica a 7 Julio dei 1503.—"Le oro e metallo sopra gli altri excellentissimo; e dell' oro si fanno li tesori e chi lo tiene fa e opera quanto vuole nel mondo[?], e finel[?]mente aggionge a mandare le anime al Paradiso.") to King Ferdinand, "gold is a thing so much the more necessary to your majesty, because, in order to fulfil the ancient prophecy, Jerusalem ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... sure. But see, the curtain is going to rise." Alcide Jolivet spoke as if he had been at the Opera, and taking his glass from its case, he prepared, with the air of a connoisseur, "to examine the first act of ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... composer. Most accounts, however, agree in stating that he wrote in the style of the modern Italians, that is to say, what were called the modern Italians in the later part of the last and the earlier part of this century. Elsner tried his strength and ability in all genres, from oratorio, opera, and symphony, down to pianoforte variations, rondos, and dances, and in none of them did he fail to be pleasing and intelligible, not even where, as especially in his sacred music, he made use—a sparing use—of contrapuntal devices, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... excessive one, in religious beneficences and foundations; which was not quite left off in recent times, though much altering its figure. Erlangen University, for example, was of Wilhelmina's doing. Erlangen University;—and also an Opera-House of excessive size in Baireuth. Such was poor Wilhelmina's sad figure of "religion." In the old days, their largest bequest that I recollect was to the TEUTSCHE RITTER, Order of Teutonic Knights, very celebrated in those days. Junior branches from Hohenzollern, as from other families, sought ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... had been heard in Poland only Italian and French operas; in this year, for the first time, a Polish opera was put on the stage. It is true the beginning was very modest. The early attempts contained few ensemble pieces, no choruses, and no complex finales. But a new art does not rise from the mind of a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... evening of the 24th of December, Napoleon was going to the Opera, to hear Haydn's Oratorio of the Creation, which was to be performed for the first time. Intensely occupied by business, he was reluctant to go; but to gratify Josephine, yielded to her urgent request. It was necessary for his carriage ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... roses a small flowering-pot containing a plant. Without shame he brought his opera-glasses and employed them from the cover of his window-curtain. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... boat had passed out of sight under the lee of the yacht. A great rocket whistled skywards, and broke in a violet flare that lighted sea and shore. The fete was over, and people were crowding on board. The band was playing a selection from a comic opera, and a few voices were singing the ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... down with them on his feet to be shined here. If he had been merely calling on the girl in Brooklyn, he would have been home early, for they do not sit up late in that borough. I know they went to the theatre, instead of to the opera or a ball, for they did not go in a cab, otherwise her skirt would not have become muddied. This, too, shows that she wore a cloth skirt, and as his shoes are not patent leathers, it is clear that neither ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... The patched Laetitia sits surrounded by her beaux. It was this afternoon she had the vapors. Next to her, as dragon over beauty, is a fat dame with "grenadier head-dress." "The Rivals" has yet to be written. London still hears "The Beggar's Opera." Lady Macbeth is played in hoopskirts. The Bastille is a tolerably tight building. Robert Burns is strewn with his first crumbs. It is the age of omber, of sonnets to Chloe's false ringlets, of odes to red heels and epics to lap dogs, of tinseled struttings in gilded drawing-rooms. ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... under the hoof of the president, founded upon them, having been prepared and ordered to be presented to the House of Commons by the members for Horsham, the meeting separated, and the delegates returned to their respective stables.' . . . WHAT habitual theatre or opera-goer has not been tempted a thousand times to laugh outright, and quite in the wrong place, at the incongruities, the inconsistencies, the mental and physical catachreses of the stage, which defy illusion and destroy all vraisemblance? ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... when, being considered marriageable, instead of "coming out" as in England, they are kept strictly at home; allowed indeed to see a little company there, but there only, except when taken per favour, once or twice to the opera, to which they go purposely in an undress, sit at the back of the box, so as not to be seen, or if accidentally beheld, they are not to be recognised. When a girl reaches the appointed years of discretion, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... it seems, communicative over a bottle of claret, when an agreement for the above purpose was entered into between them. This was subsequently carried into effect, and a drama was composed. This drama, still extant in the British Museum, in Lamb's own writing, appears to be a species of comic opera, the scene of which is laid in Gibraltar, but is without a name. I have not seen it, but speak ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... afternoon proved full of interest, and in the evening they went to see a performance of a light opera at the Columbia Theater. The performance gave them a good deal ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... wind Cheating time Only a slight flirtation What the rain saw After Our petty cares The ship and the boat Come near A suggestion A fisherman's baby Content and happiness The Cusine I wonder why A woman's hand Presentiment Two rooms Three at the opera A strain of music Smoke An autumn day Wishes The play As we look back Why Listen Together One night Lost nation The captive No song Two friends I didn't think A burial Their faces The lullaby Mirage Alone in the house An old ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the opera in 1864, and went to live at Baden, Turgenev followed the family thither, lived in a little house close to them, and saw them every day. He was on the most intimate terms with her, with her husband, and with her daughters, whom he ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... joys in the wreathed curls of smoke betaking themselves up the chimney:—he sees Messrs. Blow and Grumble, the eminent organ-builders, making a fortune by his "new movement;" having purchased and patented it: he has found a publisher for his church music, and sold his old opera. Captain de Camp has vanished in smoke—he has exploded of spontaneous combustion,—they find him all deceit, leaving a glass eye and a cork leg. Mr. Latimer gets the Colonial Bishopric of Bushantee, in ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... schools in St. Louis and Kansas City, where the shallowness and complacency of the young misses had maddened him. He had encountered bad manners and bad faith, had been the victim of sharpers of all kinds, was dogged by bad luck. He had played in orchestras that were never paid and wandering opera troupes which disbanded penniless. And there was always the old enemy, more relentless than the others. It was long since he had wished anything or desired anything beyond the necessities of the body. Now that he was tempted to hope for another, he ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... metre, which must have surely been as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their architecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form and of proportion. One thing we can understand—how this musical form of the drama, which still remains to us in lower shapes, in the oratorio, in the opera, must have helped to raise their tragedies into that ideal sphere in which they all, like the "Antigone," live and move. So ideal and yet so human; nay rather, truly ideal, because truly human. The gods, the heroes, the kings, the princesses of Greek tragedy were ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Buren? Let me look at them. A spray of lilies of the valley; how touching! He expects you to wear them at the opera. I think it's such a mistake to wear real flowers on an evening dress. They have a damp, chilly look, like fresh vegetables, at first, and when they begin to fade they make you look faded, too. Never ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... army had already arrived, as they could be easily distinguished by their ragged dress and ridiculous airs, walking up and down the street. It was all such a scene as Archie had never seen before, and would have made a great success as the scenario for a comic opera. But as a welcome to an army, supposedly victorious, it was a dismal failure, and Archie wondered what General Aguinaldo would think when he entered the town and saw such shoddy patriotism everywhere. He hadn't long to wait, however, ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... said the farmer, "that it would be more fun to shoot at a mark than to give pain to some living creature. But a gun is a poor toy, at the best, Frank. Ask your father for a good pair of opera- glasses, and study the birds instead of killing them. We know very little yet about any of them. See if you can't bring me a bit of news about some of our feathered neighbors before the summer is over. I'm a real bird-gossip, you know, and I'm always anxious ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... and momentous nature, something that dealt not only with the present but with the past of Zepata, and that the trial of so celebrated an individual as Abe Barrow should open the court-house with eclat, as Emma Abbott, who had come all the way from San Antonio to do it, had opened the new opera-house the year before. The District Attorney had said it would not take very long to dispose of Barrow's case, but he had promised it would be an interesting if brief trial, and the court-room was filled even to the open windows, ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Morgan) seems to have been troubled by no shyness in asking questions of the General. She writes: "Is it true, General, I asked, that you once went to a bal masque at the opera with the Queen of France—Marie Antoinette—leaning on your arm, the King knowing nothing of the matter till her return? I am afraid so, said he. She was so indiscreet, and I can conscientiously add—so ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... race, landed here just three hours behind Walter MacMonnies. Three letters forwarded here, from Forrest, he is flying daily at army aviation camp, also from Gertie Cowles, she and her mother are in Minneapolis, attending a week of grand opera, also to my surprise short note from Jack Ryan, the grouch, saying he has given up flying and gone ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Richling would think if she told her that all she knew of Florence was what she overheard in the talk of the girls in the hotel, who spoke before her of their dances and afternoon teas, and evenings at the opera, and drives in the Cascine, and parties to Fiesole, as if she were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... spends his life spending what he didn't earn, feeding his physical senses, who goes from rum to the races, from the races to the opera, and from the opera to roulette, ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little village where she was born and the limited audience of St. Judo's to train for the opera in New York. She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent but not more sincere in her new environment. How she works, how she studies, how she ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... "Lohengrin" was to be sung at the local opera house. Dick could have obtained, at "The Blade" office, free seats for Dave and himself for this Friday night. But they were still in close training, and there was a game on for the afternoon of the day following. For that reason nine o'clock found both of the ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... From the number of French and German operas announced for performance at the King's Theatre, it should no longer be called the Italian Opera, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... Saidie as the camel slowly and majestically entered the compound gate, and saw her clearly framed in the soft silver light; all this wondrous beauty round them seemed to be to her beauty but as the harmonies that in an opera float round the central air. And she smiled as he turned ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... respite of three years, on condition of bringing Max into the power of the fiend. On the day appointed for the prize-shooting, Max aimed at a dove but killed Caspar, and Zamiel carried off his victim to "his own place."—Weber's opera, Der ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... handsome young men of fashion were to be met; she saw none to her mind, and determined to travel. Then she lost her mother, inherited her property, assumed mourning, and made her way to Venice. There she saw Emilio, who, as he went past her opera box, exchanged with her a ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... all. Bob, I know where I've seen that Italian prince. He was in Rio Janeiro with a big Italian opera company just before I left there ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... The plea of pregnancy, generally adduced by female felons capitally convicted, which they take care to provide for, previous to their trials; every gaol having, as the Beggar's Opera informs us, one or more child getters, who qualify the ladies for that expedient ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... bad imitation of English comforts. 'As for the light amusements,' he says, they are for the most part 'a negative quantity.' When he is passing the winter by himself in Calcutta, he finds evening parties a bore, does not care for the opera, and has nobody with whom to carry on a flirtation—the chief resource of many people. He has, therefore, nothing to do but to take his morning ride, work all day, and read his books in the evening. He is afraid that he will be considered ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to the countess almost every crime under the sun. Inasmuch as her husband's principal friend was Baron Schrader, who was of course frequently seen in her company at the races and at the opera, it naturally followed that she was charged with an altogether questionable intimacy with him. In fact, she was accused of sharing her favors between him and the emperor, and in the letters that reached both the kaiser and his consort, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Venice, with a swaying melody as of floating water-grasses. Then she plunged into a throbbing aria,—singing freely, none too accurately, but with a passion and self-forgetfulness which promised greater things than the concert performer. From this on to other snatches of opera, to songs, wandering as the mood took her, coming finally to the street song that Vickers had woven into his composition for Rome, with its high, sad note. There her voice stopped, died in a cry half stifled in the throat, and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... consequence was that Mr. William Congreve, in a fit of pique, made up his mind never to write another piece for the stage—a wise resolution, perhaps—and to turn fine gentleman instead. With the exception of composing a masque called the 'Judgment of Paris,' and an opera 'Gemele,' which was never performed, he kept this resolution very honestly; and so Mr. William Congreve's career as a playwright ends at the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... and teachings—including in the list only those which offer the boldest challenge to a sane man's credulity—is uninterrupted down to our own day. A few of them may be mentioned by way of illustration. In one century we find Spanish priests demanding the suppression of the opera on the ground that this form of entertainment caused a drought, and a Pope issuing a bull against men and women having sexual intercourse with fiends. In another, we find an English tailor, unsuccessfully, allotting endless torments ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Went to Sir William Davenant's Opera; this being the fourth day that it hath begun, and the first that I have seen it. [Sir William Davenant, the celebrated dramatic writer, and patentee of the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Ob. 1668, aged 64.] To-day was acted the second part of "The Siege of Rhodes." [Of which Sir ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... but a small extempore opera, and what you will hear is only rhythmical prose or a kind of irregular verse, such as passion and necessity make ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... not live here for the world. I care not how soon we leave town. London soon grows tiresome. I wish the Captain would come. Mrs. Mirvan talks of the opera for this evening; however, I am very indifferent about ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... lead a chorus and go in the olio. And you would draw at the stage door better than you would on the front. Young and fresh as a daisy spells champagne and diamond garters. I don't believe they'd let you stay in burlesque but sign you for comic opera." ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... future for the opportunity of defraying it. We cannot resist the temptation to spend money. One will have fine furniture and live in a high-rented house; another will have wines and a box at the opera; a third must give dinners and music-parties:—all good things in their way, but not to be indulged in if they cannot be paid for. Is it not a shabby thing to pretend to give dinners, if the real parties who provide them are the butcher, the poulterer, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... of Ireland and an inhabitant of Wales; my Mother was the natural Daughter of a Scotch Peer by an italian Opera-girl—I was born in Spain and received my Education at a ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... morning was cloudless; the ranges far and near were heavily, covered with glistening snow. A few days later we picked up two men, who were tramping towards the diamond-fields. One was named Beranger; I believe he was the son of a former lessee of Covent Garden Opera House. His companion was a man named Hull, an ex-publican from Lambeth. With these two chance companions we entered into a sort of partnership; for some months after reaching the diggings we ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... cousin, went out and "tirait," to the admiration of the women-kind, and then, of course, "Papa" had to have a try. The two men, with their little gun and their talk and gesticulations, lent a queer touch of comic opera to the scene. The garden was so small, the men in their little hats were so suggestive of the "broken English" scene on the stage, that one could only ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Brahmans, a hereditary divine caste, who possess all the vast and puerile knowledge of ritual and sacrificial minutiae. As life in the opera is a series of songs, so life in the Brahmanas is a sequence of sacrifices. Sacrifice makes the sun rise and set, and the rivers run this ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... minor cities, the Benedictine ULLMANN hath been ubiquitously about, operating most vigorously, while the philosophic and courteous GOSCHE hath not been far distant. And they heralded HINKLEY, and BORCHARD, and KELLOGG, and all the other sweet swans of song; they drew after them the gems of the opera; there was selling of Libretti, (and in Boston, 'los-an-gers'); there was the donning of scarlet and blue striped cloaks, gay coiffures and butterflying fans; there was flirting, and fun, and gentle gayety in the New York Academy, and with the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Australia, with whom he came into contact, Beckler says "the octaves of the women and children at the performance he attended were perfectly in tune, as one rarely hears in a modern opera chorus, they were in exact accord." In the Kuri dance, witnessed by Angas, a number of boys take ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... partition, was arranged as a meadow, with a stream winding through it, and rocks and trees, and what not. She had a flock of sheep washed clean and white, penned up and in waiting. At a signal from her during the ball, lights were to have been turned on, and Mademoiselle, the pretty opera singer, was to come gracefully down a curving pathway, dressed as a shepherdess, singing and leading her sheep. Oh, it was to be too pure for this earth. The Duchess fretted for the opportune time. But the sheep escaped from their keepers, and, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... a hill, valley and plain or islanded sea stretching away below to meet the blazing blue of a cloudless sky, the moving pageant, thus from the first set in tune with nature, brought to a focus of splendour the rays of every separate art. More akin to an opera than to a play it had, as its basis, music. For the drama had developed out of the lyric ode, and retained throughout what was at first its only element, the dance and song of a mimetic chorus. By ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... America than in England. This statement will undoubtedly be received with incredulity by the majority of Englishmen who know nothing about the United States; but no one who does know the people of the country will dispute it. In England, the opera is still, for all the changes that have occurred in the last quarter of a century, largely a pleasure of a limited class. It may be (and personally I believe) that in that class there is a larger number of true musicians who know the operas well and love them appreciatively ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... "He discussed the new opera, asked me if I had seen Neilson in Twelfth Night, gave a brilliant description of a young French drama by a young French author, gave me his opinion of Dickens, and looked his ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... at various times with comic opera (with scenery painted for the occasion), readings and recitations; and at one of the annual dinners an illustrated history of the club and its members was given on ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1895. - French Farmhouses. • Various
... Montreal, at the age of seven, and afterwards studied in the United States, Paris and Italy. In 1870 she made her first appearanceatmessina, and after two successful seasons appeared in London in 1872 with the Royal Italian Opera. Later she abandoned opera for oratorio. and sang at all the principal festivals. She has made several tours of Canada and of the United States, and in 1886 sang at the opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London the ode written by Tennyson for the occasion. She frequently sang before ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as if he had fifty more things to say, and lingering over his farewell as if he was on the eve of departure for China instead of Mayfair, and joining me again in the Park, and asking me if I was going to the Opera, and finding out all my engagements and intentions, as if he couldn't possibly live five minutes out of my sight; and then, perhaps, never coming near us for days together, till even my aunt "wondered what had become of that pleasant Captain Lovell;" and when ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... war (complete in Opera hat and monocle) and "now" in khaki, I could think of nothing more, and boldly, but with some trepidation, asked if any gentleman in the audience would care to be drawn. You can imagine the scene. A tent packed with Tommies, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... of the 6th I went to see the French Opera Company in Auber's 'Black Domino.' It did not please me as well as some music I have heard, though parts of it were very beautiful. The hymns of the nuns were very sweet. The thought occurred to me that if the Church does not provide religious gratifications ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... should just love it! Why, I've never been to the Theater in all my life! Not even to the Opera House in Hawesville!" Hawesville was ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... that they could both sing. There was hardly an opera in vogue that one or other did not know sufficiently well to be able to recall the chief musical numbers. Iris had a sweet and sympathetic mezzo-soprano voice, Jenks an excellent baritone, and, to the secret amazement of the girl, he rendered one or two well-known Anglo-Indian ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the slow hours over—he might have noticed the strangeness of the scene before him: the successive gondolas stealing silently up through the gloom to the palely lit stone steps; the black coffins appearing to open; and then figures in white and scarlet opera-cloaks getting out into the dim light, to ascend into the brilliant glare of the theatre staircase. He, too, followed, and got into the place assigned to him. But this spectacular display failed to interest him. He turned to the bill, to remind him what he had to see. The blaze of color ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... changed the aspect of this interesting question, and placed it in a very different light. He also acquainted them with the precise amount of the income guaranteed by the Duke of Thigsberry to Violetta Stetta of the Italian Opera, which it appeared was payable quarterly, and not half-yearly, as the public had been given to understand, and which was EXclusive, and not INclusive (as had been monstrously stated,) of jewellery, perfumery, hair-powder for five ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... being absorbed in the contemplation of his own splendid future. At last he seemed to recollect her presence at his side, glanced at her, made as though to say something, checked himself, and began humming snatches from an old opera. But either his musical memory did not serve him, or his humour changed all at once, for he suddenly was silent again, and after glancing once more at Vjera's downcast face his own became ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... fellow? How much shall it be? Double? Ask anything. I can't refuse the half of my fortune to such a good angel as you are, Vail. I don't spend any money that pays so well as what I give you. I go to the clubs and to parties. I sit at the opera and listen to Signora Scracchioli, and say to myself, 'Well, there's Vail using my money to help some poor devil in trouble.' I tell you I get a comfortable conscience by an easy system of commutation. Here, exchange with me; this is ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... went to the theatre, which was that evening, on account of some Court festival, brilliantly illuminated. The Royal Family were present, and the opera was performed with more taste and execution than I had expected to meet with in so remote a place, and under the restrictions which rendered the intercourse with the Continent then so difficult. Among other remarkable characters pointed out to us was a nobleman in the pit, actually ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... must have affected the interpretation of Mr. Skinner, when, as Lanciotto, in his revival of the piece at the Chicago Grand Opera House, August 22, 1901, with Aubrey Boucicault as Paolo, Marcia Van Dresser as Francesca, and William Norris as Pepe, he met with such success. "D'Annunzio gives us the soldier and the brute," he wrote me in ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... listening to it, the sound of a hoof on a lonely road in the great woods is the footstep of cities to him coming through the trees, and the low, chocking sound of a cartwheel in the still and radiant valley throngs his being like an opera. All sights and echoes and thoughts and feelings revel in it. It is music for the smoke, rapt and beautiful, rising from the chimneys at his feet. A sheet of water—making heaven out of nothing—is beautiful to the dullest man, because he cannot analyse it, could ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... lined up with the others at Brown's on the Bowery; drank his "crystal cocktails" —the mildest of beverages—and had solemnly marched out again with his comrades in a lock-step like a gang of convicts. He had indulged in forty- cent opera, leaning over the iron railing of the top row of the Academy of Music, and had finished the evening at Pfaff's, drinking beer and munching hardtack and pickles, and had laughed and sung in a dozen other equally absurd escapades. And yet it was as plain as daylight to Fred that Oliver's ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... interlarded words of explanation. The more elderly guests were attracted, and the audience grew apace. Having finished her little musical comedy, Madge arose, and Mr. Arnault, aware of Stella Wildmere's ability to sing selections from opera, said, "Since the children have been so well entertained, I suggest that we who have the misfortune to be grown have our turn, and that Miss Wildmere give ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... himself what a peculiar state of affairs had come upon the stage—here, with an ambush lying in wait before him, this man could step blithely along, swinging his aluminum bucket and softly warbling one of the most recent hits from a comic opera—Jack had himself heard the song on the boards of a great metropolitan theatre in New York—had even caught himself whistling the catchy air more than ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... at this time, one theatre, the Chicago Opera House, which was considerably in the public eye, and its manager, David A. Henderson, had a fair local reputation. Carrie had seen one or two elaborate performances there and had heard of several others. She knew ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... of the hotel of the Minister of the Marine to see the ceremony. After I had waited from eight in the morning till near twelve the pageant commenced by the arrival of half a dozen Greek priests, with long beards, and as richly dressed as the high priests who figure in the processions of the opera. About three-quarters of an hour after this first scene the infantry, followed by the cavalry, entered the place, which, in a few moments was entirely covered with military. The Allied sovereigns at length ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... by Miss Roberts was that "A lady on ship-board, spruced up for the Park or the Opera, would only be an object of ridicule to her experienced companions. Frippery which would be discarded in England is often useful in India. Members of my sex," she adds, "who have to study economy, can always secure bargains by acquiring at small cost items ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... all my valuables. I might pawn my dress suit and studs, but if I did, I couldn't go out to dinner if I were asked, and that is always a saving. I cannot get a place in an opera company, because my voice has not been sufficiently trained. There always is something to prevent my success, no ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... difference being that the little mob drew away outside the hedge while the man made way in; for, seeing who were mounted on the great animal's neck, he ran towards the house to meet the Doctor, who, followed by the other masters, was now coming toward the gap with a small opera-glass in his hand. ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... him was next to seeing the emperor. I never expected the pleasure, but here it is allotted me. He is quite an old man in his bearing and gait. He was dressed in a blue coat with metal buttons, wore his star and garter, and had on black tights and shoes. He had been to the opera, and then came to this party. Every one pays the most deferential homage to the old hero. Waterloo and its eventful scenes came directly before me, and I felt almost impatient for ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... intently fixed upon the detective's face, as though seeking inspiration for speech from that source. The other man, Backlos, was a tall, hawk-featured man with a sweeping black moustache, who needed only gaudy habiliments to make him the ideal pirate king of the comic opera stage. It was ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... he said encouragingly. "You'll find it a first-class house,—best there is west of Chicago. From the East? Just so. You've not seen our opera-house yet, I suppose. Denver folks are rather proud of it. Biggest in the country except the new one in New York. Hope you'll ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... chief entertainment in Burma; the Burmese as a nation delight in plays—operatic, tragic, opera bouffe and ballets, such as the "Han Pwe," when a number of young girls, all dressed as royalties, posture and dance with extreme grace; and as their training is perfect, the entertainment evokes unqualified applause. So interested and absorbed do ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... I who did it for you,' she said quietly. 'And the restaurant flourished after Little-Flower-of-the-Wood had faded. Well, to-night I want to spend an hour here again, for the sake of what I used to be. Time brings changes, you understand, and I cannot conform with the great rule.' She opened the opera-cloak, trembling, and he saw that beneath ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the realities expressed by that world-famed symbol? It is true, the Senate is still represented by a single Senator, nominated by the Pope, who drives in a Lord Mayor's state coach on solemn occasions; and regularly, on the first night of the opera season, sends round ices, as a present to the favoured occupants of the second and third tiers of boxes at the "Apollo." This gentleman, by all the laws of senatorial succession, is the undoubted heir and representative of the old Roman Senate, who sat with their togas ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey |
