ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. Rossini’s music in the 1820s was fashionable. In England, the first version of Stendhal’s adulatory life of Rossini had been translated and rushed into print early in 1824, even before it appeared in Paris. The issue of 16 May 1835 noted that Grisi’s singing in Bellini’s Sonnambula was greatly applauded, but the opera is ‘insipid’. The Athenæum recognized the success of Bellini and Donizetti as dependent on the quality of the singing, rather than — as with Rossini — the innate quality of the music and the music drama. Henry Fothergill Chorley’s musical tastes were formed early and for the most part remained constant throughout his life. The production which defined the possibilities of music drama to London audiences in the early 1830s was Fidelio, as presented in Monck Mason’s season of German Opera in 1832.
