Hester Lynch Piozzi, Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany

Performer Name:

Talassi; Giannetti; Fantastici; Corilla; Lorenzi; Bertola

Performance Venue:

London; Florence; Bergamo; Verona

Performance Date:

 

Author:

Piozzi, Hester Lynch

Date Written:

1789

Language:

English

Publication Title:

Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany

Article Title:

 

Page Numbers:

121-23, 140, 161-63, 344, 353-54

Additional Info:

Ed. Herbert Barrows

Publisher:

University of Michigan Press

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor

Date Published:

1967

Text:

[121 “Ferrara”] I looked half an hour before I could find one beggar, a bad account of poor Ferrara; but it brought to my mind how unreasonably my daughter and myself had laughed seven years ago, at reading in an extract from some of the foreign gazettes, how the famous Improvisatore Talassi, who was in England about the year 1770, and entertained with his justly-admired talents the literati at London; had published an account of his visit to Mr. Thrale, at a villa eight miles from Westminster-bridge, during that time, when he had the good fortune, he said, to meet many celebrated characters at his country-seat; and the mortification which nearly overbalanced it, to miss seeing the immortal Garrick then confined by illness. […]

Mr. Talassi is reckoned in his own country a man of great genius; in ours he was, as I recollect, received with much attention, as a person able and willing to give us demonstration that improviso verses might be made, and sung extempo- [122] raneously to some well-known tune, generally one which admits of and requires very long lines; that so alternate rhymes may not be improper, as they give more time to think forward, and gain a moment for composition. Of this power, many, till they saw it done, did not believe the existence; and many, after they had seen it done, persisted in saying, perhaps in thinking, that it could be done only in Italian. I cannot however believe that they possess any exclusive privileges or supernatural gifts; though it will be hard to find one who thinks better of them than I do: but Spaniards can sing sequedillas under their mistresses window well enough; and our Welch people can make the harper sit down in the churchyard after service is over, and placing themselves round him, command the instrument to go over some old song-tune: when having listened a while, one of the company forms a stanza of verses, which run to it in well-adapted measure; and as he ends, another begins: continuing the tale, or retorting the satire, according to the style in which the first began it. All this too in a language less perhaps than any other melodious to the ear, though Howell found out a resemblance between their prosody and that of the Italian writers in early days, when they held agnominations, or the inforcement of consonant words and syllables one upon the other, to be elegant in a more eminent degree than they do now. For example, in Welch, Tewgris, todyrris, ty'r derrin, gwillt, &c. in Italian, Donne, O danno che felo affronto affronta: in selva salvo a me, with a thousand more. The whole secret of improvisation, however, seems to consist in this; that extempore verses are never written down, and one may easily conceive that much may go well with a good voice in singing, which no one would read if they were once registered by the pen.

I have already asserted that the Italians are not a laughing nation: were ridicule to step in among them, many innocent pleasures would soon be lost; and this among the first. For who would risque the making impromptu poems at Paris? pour s'attirer persiflage in every Coterie comme il faut*? Or in London, at the hazard of being taken off, and held up for a [123] laughing-stock at every print-seller's window? A man must have good courage in England, before he ventures at diverting a little company by such devices: while one would yawn, and one would whisper, a third would walk gravely out of the room, and say to his friend upon the stairs, "Why sure we had better read our old poets at home, than be called together, like fools, to hear what comes uppermost in such-a-one's head, about his Daphne! In good time! Why I have been tired of Daphne since I was fourteen years old." But the best jest of all would be, to see an ordinary fellow, a strolling player for example, set seriously to make or repeat verses in our streets or squares concerning his sweetheart's cruelty; when he would be in more danger from that of the mob and the magistrates; who, if the first did not throw dirt at him, and drive him home quickly, would come themselves, and examine into his sanity, and if they found him not statutably mad, commit him for a vagrant.

Different amusements, like different sorts of food, suit different countries; and this is among the efforts of those who have learned to refine their pleasures without so refining their ideas as to be able no longer to hit on any pleasure subtle enough to escape their own power of ridiculing it.

*To draw upon one's self the ridicule of every polite assembly.

[140 “Florence”] Giannetti, who pronounced the panegyric, is the justly-celebrated improvisatore, so famous for making Latin verses impromptu, as others do Italian ones: the speech has been translated into English by Mr. Merry, with whom I had the honour here first to make acquaintance, having met him at Mr. Greatheed's, who is our fellow-lodger, and with whom and his amiable family the time passes in reciprocations of confidential friendship and mutual esteem.

[161 “Florence”] But we are called away to hear the fair Fantastici, a young woman who makes improviso verses, and sings them, as they tell me, with infinite learning and taste. She is successor to the celebrated Corilla, who no longer exhibits the power she once [162] held without a rival: yet to her conversations every one still strives for admittance, though she is now ill, and old, and hoarse with repeated colds. She spares, however, now by no labour or fatigue to obtain and keep that superiority and admiration which one day perhaps gave her almost equal trouble to receive and to repay. But who can bear to lay their laurels by? Corilla is gay by nature, and witty, if I may say so, by habit; replete with fancy, and powerful to combine images apparently distant. Mankind is at last more just to people of talents than is universally allowed, I think. Corilla, without pretensions either to immaculate character (in the English sense), deep erudition, or high birth, which an Italian esteems above all earthly things, has so made her way in the world, that all the nobility of both sexes crowd to her house; that no Prince passes through Florence without waiting on Corilla; that the Capitol will long recollect her being crowned there, and that many sovereigns have not only sought her company, but have been obliged to put up with slights from her independent spirit, and from her airy, rather than haughty behaviour. She is, however, (I cannot guess why) not rich, and keeps no carriage; but enjoying all the effect of money, convenience, company, and general attention, is probably very happy; as she does not much suffer her thoughts of the next world to disturb her felicity in this, I believe, while willing to turn every thing into mirth, and make all admire her wit, even at the expence of their own virtue. The following Epigram, made by her, will explain my meaning, and give a specimen of her present powers of improvisation, undecayed by ill health; and I might add, undismayed by it. An old gentleman here, one Gaetano Testa Grossa had a young wife, whose name was Mary, and who brought him a son when he was more than seventy years old. Corilla led him gaily into the circle of company with these words:

    "Miei Signori Io vi presento
        Il buon Uomo Gaetano;
     Che non sa che cosa sia
        Il mistero sovr'umano
     Del Figliuolo di Maria."

[163] Let not the infidels triumph however, or rank among them the truly-illustrious Corilla! 'Twas but the rage, I hope, of keeping at any rate the fame she has gained, when the sweet voice is gone, which once enchanted all who heard it–like the daughters of Pierius in Ovid.

And though I was exceedingly entertained by the present improvisatrice, the charming Fantastici, whose youth, beauty, erudition, and fidelity to her husband, give her every claim upon one's heart, and every just pretension to applause, I could not, in the midst of that delight, which classick learning and musical excellence combined to produce, forbear a grateful recollection of the civilities I had received from Corilla, and half-regretting that her rival should be so successful;

For tho' the treacherous tapster, Thomas,
Hangs a new angel ten doors from us,
We hold it both a shame and sin
To quit the true old Angel Inn.

Well! if some people have too little appearance of respect for religion, there are others who offend one by having too much, and so the balance is kept even.

[344 “Bergamo”] He shewed me this pretty distich in her praise, made improviso by the celebrated philosopher Vallisnieri:

     Contemptrix sexus, omiscia Clelia sexum,
        Illustrat studio, moribus, arte metro.*

The Italians are exceedingly happy in the power of making verses improviso, either in their old or their new language: we were speaking the other day of the famous epigram in Ausonius;

     Infelix Dido, nulli bene nupta marito,
        Hoc moriente fugis, hoc fugiente peris.**

Our equally noble and ingenious master of the house rendered it in Italian thus immediately:

     Misera Dido! fra i nuziali ardori,
        L'un muore e fuggi—l'altro fugge e muori.

 

*Her studies, manners, arts, to all proclaim
Fair Clelia's glory, and her sex's shame.

**Two lords in vain unlucky Dido tries;
One dead, she flies the land; one fled–she dies.

[353 “Verona”] Improvisation at this place pleases me far better than it did in Tuscany. Our truly-learned Abate Lorenzi astonishes all who hear him, by repeating, not singing, a series of admirably just and well-digested thoughts, which he, and he alone, possesses the power of arranging suddenly as if by magic, and methodically as if by study, to rhymes the most melodious, and most varied; while the Abbé [354] Bertola, of the university at Pavia, gives one pleasure by the same talent in a manner totally different, singing his unpredmeditated strains to the accompaniment of a harpsichord, round which stand a little chorus of friends, who interpolate from time to time two lines of a well-known song, to which he pleasingly adapts his compositions, and goes on gracing the barren subject, and adorning it with every possible decoration of wit, and every desirable elegance of sentiment. Nothing can surely surpass the happy promptitude of his expression, unless it is the brilliancy of his genius.

We were in a large company last night, where a beautiful woman of quality came in dressed according to the present taste, with a gauze head-dress, adjusted turbanwise, and a heron's feather; the neck wholly bare. Abate Bertola bid me look at her, and, recollecting himself a moment, made this Epigram improviso:

Volto e Crin hai di Sultana,
Perchè mai mi vien disdetto,
Sodducente Mussulmana
Di gittarti il Fazzoletto?

of which I can give no better imitation than the following:

While turban'd head and plumage high
A Sultaness proclaims my Cloe;
Thus tempted, tho' no Turk, I'll try
The handkerchief you scorn—to throw ye.

Notes:

Collected by:

DP