Music Abroad

       Music, on a broader scale, moreover, has its best cultivation and its largest audiences in the town, where opera has asserted a sort of sovereignty and immense throngs never think of grudging immense sums of money, glad to get music at its best on any terms. For the opera is the idealization and apotheosis of the drama; it is the drama set to music, and where the subtile inflections and far-reaching influences of tune and harmony shall do more than words can do shall make the prosaic impassioned, and the impassioned divine. 

       "Lurline" (overture above)  is a grand romantic opera in three acts composed by William Vincent Wallace to an English libretto by Edward Fitzball, It was first performed on 23 February 1860 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden by the Pyne and Harrison English Opera Company with Louisa Pyne in the title role. The libretto is based on the legend of the Lorelei. Read more...

• The London Season: The Theatre and The Opera
• Victorian Entertainments: "We Are Amused" 
• Music in The Era of Queen Victoria
• The English Opera