Armand escapes to a village near Paris, but is
captured by the Cardinal's troops while protecting his wife Constance,
who has followed him, from the insults of two soldiers. In the end a
pardon arrives from the Queen, and all ends happily. In spite of the
serious and even tragic cast of the plot, the use of spoken dialogue
compels us to class 'Les Deux Journees' as an opera comique; and the
same rule applies to 'Medee,' Cherubini's finest work, an opera which
for dignity of thought and grandeur of expression deserves to rank high
among the productions of the period. Lesueur (1763-1837) may fitly be
mentioned by the side of Mehul and Cherubini. His opera 'Les Bardes,'
though now forgotten, has qualities of undeniable excellence. Its faults
as well as its beauties are those of the period which produced it. It is
declamatory rather than lyrical, and decorative rather than dramatic,
but in the midst of its conventions and formality there is much that is
true as well as picturesque.
During the closing years of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the
nineteenth century the activity of the French school of opera is in
remarkable contrast with the stagnation which prevailed in Italy and
Germany. Italy, a slave to the facile graces of the Neapolitan school,
still awaited the composer who should strike off her chains and renew
the youth of her national art; while Germany, among the crowds of
imitators who clung to the skirts of Mozart's mantle, could not produce
one worthy to follow in his steps.
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