- Performer Name:
- Sgricci
- Performance Venue:
- Milan
- Performance Date:
- 1816
- Author:
- Byron, Lord
- Date Written:
- 1816
- Language:
- English
- Publication Title:
- Byron’s Letters and Journals
- Article Title:
- Page Numbers:
- 5:124-5
- Additional Info:
- Ed. Leslie A. Marchand
- Publisher:
- John Murray
- Place of Publication:
- London
- Date Published:
- 1976
Text:
[124] There was a [125] famous improvvisatore who held forth while I was there [i.e., in Milan]. His fluency astonished me; but, although I understand Italian, and speak it (with more readiness than accuracy), I could only carry off a few very common-place mythological images, and one line about Artemisia, and another about Algiers, with sixty words of an entire tragedy about Eteocles and Polynices. Some of the Italians liked him — others called his performance 'seccatura' (a devilish good word, by the way) and all Milan was in controversy about him.
Notes:
Letter to Thomas Moore, from Verona, 6 November 1816
- Collected by:
- AE