Article on the potential revival of English opera

“There is every reason to hope that Mme. Parepa-Rosa’s scheme for organizing a first class English opera company will meet with popular favor. The late William Vincent Wallace used to be fond of quoting Aaron Hill’s famous letter to Handel, exhorting him ‘to be resolute enough to deliver us from our Italian bondage and to demonstrate that English is soft enough for opera when composed by poets who know how to distinguish the sweetness of our tongue from the strength of it, where the last is less necessary.’ It is a seriously mooted question whether the idea that the Italian is best adapted to music has not been pernicious. It is certain that Mme. Parepa-Rosa, Mme. Sainton-Dolby, Miss Louisa Pyne, Mme. Lemmens-Sherrington, Mr. Sims Reeves and Mr. Santley chiefly owe the high reputation wich they enjoy to their performances in their own language. It is, moreover, probable that one of these days American and English audiences will not deem it unfashionable to confess honestly that they derive more pleasure from hearing words sung which they understand than from any foreign libretti.”