Italian Opera [Second Article — Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 22 December 1827, p. 263. Never reprinted. This fine, witty essay fulfils the concluding promise in the previous week’s article on opera (see above, pp. 176–83). It is also continuous with that earlier piece in its knowledge of London opera, and its gentle quizzing of the Edinburgh literati. Colloquialisms like ‘shelfed’ and ‘By the way’, sentences starting with ‘And’ or ‘But’, and the word ‘contemporary’ rather than ‘cotemporary’, strongly suggest De Quincey, in their context in the Post. English perspective is implied when the critic compares ‘the two nations’ of Italy and England’, and ‘Italian and English acting’. Jokes like ‘witnessing an Italian murder’, and ‘a common cord’, both in reference to music, sound very De Quinceyan in their yoking of art and death.