" It is
these gentry who, in phrase that a Tuscan would spurn at, and in a brogue
from which a Roman, ear would be averted with disgust, assure our
fashionable opera goers that we poor Englishers cannot learn to pronounce
Italian.
But, after all, do we, by employing only _foreigners_--for we are not
particular, so they be foreigners, as to whether they were born and bred
beyond, or on this side the Alps,--do we, by employing only foreigners,
secure this essential purity of Italian pronunciation? Will these
super-delicate critics favour a plain man, by informing me which of the
great singers I have heard for the last thirty years I should select as my
canon of true Italian pronunciation--Catalani and Camporese, or Garcia the
Spaniard and Begrez the Fleming? There is not more difference between the
English, whether we look to phraseology or pronunciation, of a Londoner, a
Gloucestershire man, or a Northumbrian, than there is between the Italian
of a Tuscan, a Venetian and a Neapolitan. Have the stage lamps of Drury
Lane or Covent Garden the virtue of curing the Northumbrian's burr, or
correcting the Gloucestershireman's invincible abhorrence of _h_'s and
_w_'s? If not, can we expect that even the theatres of Rome and Florence
will neutralize at once the provincial accent of a Neapolitan or Venetian?
Was it in Morelli, the stable-boy, or Banti, the street
ballad-singer, that the beau ideal of pure Italian pronunciation was to be
recognised?
But, to be serious.
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