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it was after the Devil had seduced Eve in Italian . ' Even Goethe himself gave countenance to the slander in one of his Venetian epigrams . ' Manifold have been ray attempts . I have engraved on copper , painted in oil , and modelled in clay ; but with no constancy ; and I learned and I effected nothing . One single talent only I brought near to mastery—writing German . And so , unhappy poet ! I wasted
In dem schlechtesten stoff , leider nun Leben und Kunst / ( on the worst of materials , alas ! life and art . ) But in atonement for this unpatriotic effusion which , like that other epigram in which he addresses Ennui as the mother of the Muses and his inspiring goddess , is to be taken but half in earnest , he wrote his operas , the first of which , both in place and in merit , is his Claudine von Villa Bella . The characters are all Italian ; and
there is throughout a delicious warmth and balmy sweetness , which brings back to our recollections Sicily , the delightful island on which the scene lies . All the songs and airs , earnest and playful , including a ballad such as Goethe alone could write , are exquisite . The dramatic part is as excellent , if not as could , at least , as need be ; for it will hardly be denied that there are certain high qualities of the drama which are out of their place in
the opera . Though our church service gives a certain licence to the priest , and allows some of its prescribed forms to be said or sung , yet , with deference to my lords the bishops , their tolerance should have been directed elsewhere . Thoughts ought never to be sung . Feelings are but coarsely enunciated in spoken words : character , certainly , if anything , ought to be indicated by music ; and it is probably because the music is supposed so completely to express it , that we know no opera of which the words express any
character whatever . Romantic incident seems to be the peculiar field for the lyrical drama . Had that form of play existed in Shakspeare ' s time , he would , perhaps , have poured forth all the exuberance of his lyrical talent , ( which has been nearly overlooked among his other miraculous powers , ) on the romantic tales of the Tempest , Midsummer Night ' s Dream , Love ' s Labour Lost , &c . but certainly not on those of Macbeth , Othello , Lear , or Hamlet .
Goethe has in this piece dramatised a romantic tale , of which this is the subject : —Pedro is with his mistress Claudine at the castle of Villa Bella , but hastens from her in search of his brother , who has been seduced to become a captain of banditti . But , at the moment of his departure , the castle is beset by banditti ; and at the same time a mysterious stranger obtains access to the castle ,
and wins the affections of Lucinde . Now , it is equally unnecessary to say who this stranger is , or what is the result of the lighting . In an opera all these are matters of course . Robbers who sing are , after all , not very fierce ; and the bandit hero is not unworthy to be the brother of redro and the husband of Lucinde ,
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S 84 Goethe ' s WorkK
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 684, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/34/
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