|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: could not play. Then they would stand up together in front of the
smart people sitting on the chairs, and one of the greatest geniuses
of the time, the unrecognized Orpheus of Modern Music, would perform
passages from his operas--pieces so remarkable that they would extract
a few half-pence from Parisian supineness. When some /dilettante/ of
comic operas happened to be sitting there and did not recognize from
what work they were taken, he would question the woman dressed like a
Greek priestess, who held out a bottle-stand of stamped metal in which
she collected charity.
"I say, my dear, what is that music out of?"
"The opera of /Mahomet/," Marianna would reply.
Gambara |
