a driving
snow-storm that his friend Merelli decoyed him to a field, in which so
much fame was awaiting him.

This Merelli had first become interested in Verdi from overhearing the
singer Signora Strepponi praising Verdi's first opera. This was before
the failure of the comic opera and the annihilation of Verdi's family.

When Merelli had at length decoyed Verdi back to composition, his next
work, "Nabucco," was a decided success, the principal part being taken
by this same Strepponi. She had made her debut seven years before, and
was a singer of dramatic fire and vocal splendour, we are told. Her
enthusiasm for Verdi's work not only fastened the claim of operatic art
upon him, but won his interest in her charms also, and Verdi and she
were soon joined in an alliance, which after some years was legalised
and churched. She shortly after left the stage without waiting to "lag
superfluous" there. Thenceforward she shared with Verdi that life of
quiet retirement from the world in which he played the patriarch and
the farmer, breeding horses and watching the harmonies of nature with
almost more enthusiasm than the progress of his art.

So much for the Italian opera composers. How do the Germans compare?

VARIOUS GERMANS

The old composer Hasse, like Rossini, being himself the most popular
composer of the day, married one of the most popular singers of her
time, and scored a double triumph with her. This was the famous
Faustina.

Mendelssohn's friend, Carl Zelter, was a busy lover, as his
autobiography makes plain. One of his flirtations was with an artistic
Jewess, with whom he quarrelled and from whom he parted, because they
could not agree upon the art of suicide as outlined in Goethe's then
new work, "The Sorrows of Werther."

Albert Lortzing was married before he was twenty, and lived busily as
singer, composer, and instrumentalist, travelling here and there with a
family that increased along with his debts. It was not till after his
death, and then by a public subscription, that his family knew the end
of worry.

Similarly the public came to the aid of Robert Franz, before his death,
thanks to Liszt and others. For Franz, who had married the song
composer, Marie Hinrichs, lost his hearing and drifted to the brink of
despair before a series of concerts rescued him from starvation.

Heinrich Marschner was married three times, his latter two wives being
vocalists. Thalberg married a daughter of the great singer