This resulted in the suppression of that part of the aria
beginning _O Paradis sorti de l'onde_ as the saxophone did not produce a
good effect. Fetis also allowed Perrin to make over a bass solo into a
chorus, the Bishop's Chorus. The great vocal range in this is poorly
adapted for a chorus. Some barbarous modulations are certainly
apocryphal....
We are unable to imagine what _L'Africanne_ would have been if Scribe
had lived and the authors had put it into shape. The work we have is
illogical and incomplete. The words are simply monstrous and Scribe
certainly would not have kept them. This is the case in the passage in
the great duet:
O ma Selika, vous regnez sur mon ame!
--Ah! ne dis pas ces mots brulante!
Ils m'egarent moi-meme....
The music stitched to this impossible piece, however, had its
admirers--even fanatical admirers--so great was the prestige of the
author's name at the time of its appearance. We must not forget that
there are, indeed, some beautiful pages in this chaos. The religious
ceremony in the fourth act and the Brahmin recitative accompanied by the
_pizzicati_ of the bass may be mentioned as an indication of this. The
latter passage is not in favor, however; they play it down without
conviction and so deprive it of all its strength and majesty.
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