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196 'National Music of the World.
musical adaptability; yet still they are unknown abroad. No Eoieldieu, or Niedermeyer, or Flotow has thought it worth while to eke out his own tenuity of invention, or to give a morsel of local colour, by consulting so remarkable a treasury of national melodies.
There is a modern French opera, ' Nabab,' the same which assisted to bring forward the exquisitely finished accomplishments of Madame Miolan Carvalho, the scene of which is partly laid in Wales. Here, what is called 'the local colour' resolved itself into a snuff manufactory, with a vine above the door, and a young lady in a tartan scarf, who sung as a bravura in praise of tobacco, no sweet Welsh melody, but a sharply-cut Parisian tune. I do not remember a single Welsh air on the English stage during the last five and twenty years, save the one introduced by Mr. Charles Mathews into one of the Olympic dramas.
One cause of such oversight may be found in the persevering (why not say, obstinate?) insulation within which our neighbour-subjects, by way of asserting pedigree, have coffered up, and clamped and chained their nationality. Surely, in these days, when intercourse must be rapid, when the world can be for no one's pleasure or pride parcelled |
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