Music
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In 1787, Saint-George conducted the premières of Joseph Haydn's six "Paris symphonies." Marie-Antoinette had them performed several nights in a row, such that one of these symphonies, No. 85, was subtitled "The Queen," in her honor.
Mozart stayed in Paris in 1778 during the time of Saint-George's triumph.
Saint-George's second opera, La Chasse (The Hunt, now lost), first performed on October 12, 1778, was enthusiastically received by the audience and the press alike.
Saint-George owed his fame as much to his virtuosity as to his compositions. His concertos attracted crowds to the Hôtel de Soubise (now the National Archives), and to performances by the Concert des Amateurs (eighty musicians), led by Saint-George. The composer's operas (including one for which the libretto was written by Choderlos de Laclos) enjoyed undeniable popularity at the Italian Comedy. Saint-George's qualities as a conductor were such that his orchestras were considered to be among the best in Europe.
Read more about this topic: Chevalier De Saint-George
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played to them, was superfluous—entirely superfluous.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Did the kiss of Mother Mary
Put that music in her face?
Yet she goes with footstep wary,
Full of earth’s old timid grace.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)