Is it possible to hear his
symphonies without recognizing in them the germs of innumerable modern
melodies, the precious metal which others beat out, wherewith to plate
their baser compositions,--exhaustless materials for the use of his
successors, like those noble temples which antiquity has raised in the
East, to become, in the sequel, the quarries from which whole cities
of lowlier dwellings are constructed?
At the Karnthner Thor I heard the Huguenots admirably performed.
Decorations excepted, I really thought it better done than at the
Academie Royale. Meyerbeer's brilliant and original conceptions, in
turning the chorus into an oral orchestra, are better realized. A
French vaudeville company performed on the alternate nights. Carl, the
rich Jew manager of the Wieden, and proprietor of the Leopold-Stadt
Theatre, is adding largely to his fortune, thanks to the rich and racy
drolleries of Nestroz and Schulz, who are the Matthews and Liston of
Vienna. The former of these excellent actors is certainly the most
successful farce-writer in Germany. Without any of Raimund's
sentimental-humorous dialogue, he has a far happier eye for character,
and only the untranslatable dialect of Vienna has preserved him from
foreign play-wrights.
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