rradiates an inconsequential material
body; but human nature has not yet freed itself sufficiently from gross
clogs to attain so ideal an attitude.

It is to a danger similar to that which threatened the original New
York "Samson" that the world owes the most popular melody in Rossini's
"Mose." The story is old and familiar to the students of operatic
history, but will bear retelling. The plague of darkness opens the
opera, the passage of the Red Sea concludes it. Rossini's stage manager
had no difficulty with the former, which demanded nothing more than the
lowering of the stage lights. But he could evolve no device which could
save the final miracle from laughter. A hilarious ending to so solemn a
work disturbed the management and the librettist, Totola, who, just
before a projected revival in Naples, a year or two after the first
production, came to the composer with a project for saving the third
act. Rossini was in bed, as usual, and the poet showed him the text of
the prayer, "Dal tuo stellato," which he said he had written in an
hour. "I will get up and write the music," said Rossini; "you shall
have it in a quarter of an hour." And he kept his word, whether
literally or not in respect of time does not matter. When the opera was
again performed it contained the chorus with its melody which provided
Paganini with material for one of his sensational performances on the
G-string.

[figure: a musical score excerpt]

Carpani tells the story and describes the effect upon the audience
which heard it for the first time. Laughter was just beginning in the
pit when the public was surprised to note that Moses was about to sing.
The people stopped laughing and prepared to listen. They were awed by
the beauty of the minor strain which was echoed by Aaron and then by
the chorus of Israelites. The host marched across the mimic sea and
fell on its knees, and the music burst forth again, but now in the
major mode. And now the audience joined in the jubilation. The people
in the boxes, says Carpani, stood up; they leaned over the railings;
applauded; they shouted: "Bello! bello! O che bello!" Carpani adds: "I
am almost in tears when I think of this prayer." An impressionable
folk, those Italians of less than a century ago. "Among other things
that can be said in praise of our hero," remarked a physician to
Carpani, amidst the enthusiasm caused by the revamped opera, "do not
forget that he is an assassin. I can cite to you more