In
New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, there are
buildings exclusively appropriated to this new form of art, this exotic,
expensive amusement. These opera-houses, too, illustrate most aptly the
progress of other arts. They are adorned with painting and gilding and
carving; they are as sumptuous in accommodation as the palaces of European
potentates; they are lighted with a brilliancy that Aladdin's garden never
rivalled; they are thronged, with crowds as gayly dressed as those that
fill the saloons of Parisian belles; and the singers and actors who
interpret the thoughts of mighty foreign masters are the same who delight
the Emperor of the French when he pays a visit to the Queen of Great
Britain and Ireland. Orchestras of many instruments discourse most eloquent
music, and involuted strains are criticized in learned style, in capitals
thousands of miles from the seashore. And there is no appreciation of art
in all this! there is no embodiment of the love of the age for material
magnificence, there is no poetry incarnated into form, in this combination
of splendors rivalling the opium-eater's visions! The Americans are a dull,
stupid people, immersed in business; art has no effect upon them; it is
despised among them; it can never prosper here!
The stage, indeed, in its various forms, seems more fully to manifest and
illustrate the artistic influence among Americans than any other art. It
often addresses those whom more refined solicitations might never
reach.
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