" Linda di Chamouni '' was produced, for the benefit
of Madame Persiani, on the 1st of June. The cast, in-
cluding Pcrsiani herself, Brambilla, Mario, Lablache,
Fornasari, and Federico Lablache, was a great, almost
a perfect one. The town was " taken by storm," and I
was universally congratulated on the great success
achieved. It is somewhat curious to see how the
musical world of that day contrived to recede from the
previous tones of depreciation with which it had been
the fashion to receive the operas of Donizetti. "Dramas
of a higher class," people afiirmed, " were unsuited to



" DON PASQDALE." 69

Donizetti's powers. "Unable to cope with the grand and
terrible, he can treat a subject like this with considerable
feeling." He had displayed "more aim at the chaste and-
pathetic, less confidence in naive and unmeaning com-
mon-place." He was suddenly found to possess "to a
considerable degree the gift of melody." And so on, and
so on, in varied phrase of retractation. Some of the
would-be consistent, it is true, declared the music
"poor," with "no richness of harmony, no depth of
combination," or admitted, at most, that it was the
"least offensive" of Donizetti's operas. As for the
public, it insisted on judging the opera from its own
point of view : it applauded, it crowded to the repre-
sentations, it insisted upon making it a success.
