Letter XVI

Summary

My dear Lady,

Altho’ I cannot tell how you receiv’d my Observations on the Tragedy of The Distress’d Mother, and the Comedy of The Tender Husband; yet will I proceed to give your Ladyship my Opinion of the Opera I was at last Night.

But what can I say, when I have mention’d what you so well know, the fine Scenes, the genteel Company, the charming Voices, and delightful Musick?

If, Madam, like the Nightingale, one were all Voice, or were all Ear, and lost to every Sense but that, and Harmony, surely the Italian Opera would be a transporting Thing!—But when one finds good Sense, and Instruction, and Propriety, sacrific’d to the Charms of Sound, what an unedifying, what a mere temporary Delight does it afford! For what does one carry home, but the Remembrance of having been pleas’d so many Hours by Air, well beaten and play’d upon; which being but Sound, you cannot bring away with you; and must therefore enter the Time pass’d in such a Diversion, into the Account of those blank Hours, from which one has not reap’d so much as one improving Lesson?

I speak this with regard to myself, who know nothing of the Italian Language: But yet I may not be very unhappy, that I do not, if I may form my Opinion of the Sentiments by the enervating Softness of the Sound, and the unmanly Attitudes and Gestures made use of to express the Passions of the Men-Performers, and from the amorous Complainings of the Women; as visible in the soft, the too-soft, Action of each.

Then, tho’ I cannot but say, That the Musick is most melodious, yet to see a Hero, as an Alexander, or a Julius Cæsar, warbling out his Atchievements in War, his military Conquests, as well as his Love, in a soft Song, it seems to me to be making a Jest of both.

And how much more absurd is it still, to hear some dying Chieftain, some unfortunate Hero, chanting forth his Woes and his Calamities, and taking his Leave of the World (with less Propriety than our English Criminals at the fatal Tree) in a Sonetta! What can this move, how can this pierce, be the Story ever so dismal, any thing but one's Ears?