“I need say nothing of the coronation march announcing the enthronement of Osiride, intended by the King as a challenge to Moses; to hear it is enough.  Their famous Beethoven has written nothing grander.  And this march, full of earthly pomp, contrasts finely with the march of the Israelites.  Compare them, and you will see that the music is full of purpose.

“Elcia declares her love in the presence of the two Hebrew leaders, and then renounces it in the fine aria, Porge la destra amata.  (Place your beloved hand.) Ah!  What anguish!  Only look at the house!”

The pit was shouting bravo, when Genovese left the stage.

“Now, free from her deplorable lover, we shall hear Tinti sing, O desolata Elcia—­the tremendous cavatina expressive of love disapproved by God.”

“Where art thou, Rossini?” cried Cataneo.  “If he could but hear the music created by his genius so magnificently performed,” he went on.  “Is not Clarina worthy of him?” he asked Capraja.  “To give life to those notes by such gusts of flame, starting from the lungs and feeding in the air on some unknown matter which our ears inhale, and which bears us heavenwards in a rapture of love, she must be divine!”

“She is like the gorgeous Indian plant, which deserting the earth absorbs invisible nourishment from the atmosphere, and sheds from its spiral white blossom such fragrant vapors as fill the brain with dreams,” replied Capraja.

On being recalled, la Tinti appeared alone.  She was received with a storm of applause; a thousand kisses were blown to her from finger-tips; she was pelted with roses, and a wreath was made of the flowers snatched from the ladies’ caps, almost all sent out from Paris.

The cavatina was encored.

“How eagerly Capraja, with his passion for embellishments, must have looked forward to this air, which derives all its value from execution,” remarked Massimilla.  “Here Rossini has, so to speak, given the reins over to the singer’s fancy.  Her cadenzas and her feeling are everything.  With a poor voice or inferior execution, it would be nothing—­the throat is responsible for the effects of this aria.

“The singer has to express the most intense anguish,—­that of a woman who sees her lover dying before her very eyes.  La Tinti makes the house ring with her highest notes; and Rossini, to leave pure singing free to do its utmost, has written it in the simplest, clearest style.  Then, as a crowning effort, he has composed those heartrending musical cries:  Tormenti!  Affanni!  Smanie! What grief, what anguish, in those runs.  And la Tinti, you see, has quite carried the house off its feet.”

The Frenchman, bewildered by this adoring admiration throughout a vast theatre for the source of its delight, here had a glimpse of genuine Italian nature.  But neither the Duchess nor the two young men paid any attention to the ovation.  Clarina began again.