success surpassed all that had preceded it, and two years later a still finer masterpiece, “La Buona Figluola,” written to a text furnished by the poet Goldoni, and founded on the story of Richardson’s “Pamela.”  This opera was produced at every playhouse on the Italian peninsula in the course of a few years.  A pleasant mot by the Duke of Brunswick is worth preserving in this connection.  Piccini had married a beautiful singer named Vicenza Sibilla, and his home was very happy.  One day the German prince visited Piccini, and found him rocking the cradle of his youngest child, while the eldest was tugging at the paternal coat-tails.  The mother, being en deshabille, ran away at the sight of a stranger.  The duke excused himself for his want of ceremony, and added, “I am delighted to see so great a man living in such simplicity, and that the author of ‘La Bonne Fille’ is such a good father.”  Piccini’s placid and pleasant life was destined, however, to pass into stormy waters.

His sway over the stage and the popular preference continued until 1773, when a clique of envious rivals at Rome brought about his first disaster.  The composer was greatly disheartened, and took to his bed, for he was ill alike in mind and body.  The turning-point in his career had come, and he was to enter into an arena which taxed his powers in a contest such as he had not yet dreamed of.  His operas having been heard and admired in France, their great reputation inspired the royal favorite, Mme. du Barry, with the hope of finding a successful competitor to the great German composer, patronized by Marie Antoinette.  Accordingly, Piccini was offered an indemnity of six thousand francs, and a residence in the hotel of the Neapolitan ambassador.  When the Italian arrived in Paris, Gluck was in full sway, the idol of the court and public, and about to produce his “Armide.”

Piccini was immediately commissioned to write a new opera, and he applied to the brilliant Marmontel for a libretto.  The poet rearranged one of Quinault’s tragedies, “Roland,” and Piccini undertook the difficult task of composing music to words in a language as yet unknown to him.  Marcnontel was his unwearied tutor, and he writes in his “Memoirs” of his pleasant yet arduous task:  “Line by line, word by word, I had everything to explain; and, when he had laid hold of the meaning of a passage, I recited it to him, marking the accent, the prosody, and the cadence of the verses.  He listened eagerly, and I had the satisfaction to know that what he heard was carefully noted.  His delicate ear seized so readily the accent of the language and the measure of the poetry, that in his music he never mistook them.  It was an inexpressible pleasure to me to see him practice before my eyes an art of which before I had no idea.  His harmony was in his mind.  He wrote his airs with the utmost rapidity, and when he had traced its designs, he filled up all the parts of the score, distributing the traits of harmony and melody, just as a skillful painter would distribute on his canvas the colors, lights, and shadows of his picture.  When all this was done, he opened his harpsichord, which he had been using as his writing-table; and then I heard an air, a duet, a chorus, complete in all its parts, with a truth of expression, an intelligence, a unity of design, a magic in the harmony, which delighted both my ear and my feelings.”