The Nations Angry

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 17, 1872

The Nations Angry.

We have seen of late years, a striking exhibition of that spirit among the nations of the earth which is described in Rev. 11:18, as the anger of the nations, and which was to characterize them in the last days. But we doubt if ever before that spirit prevailed to such an extent as is described in the following article, from which it appears that the jealousy and hatred existing among the nations is so strong that even works of art are hissed and rejected by one nation because they happen to originate in another. Under the heading of “Art and Politics in Europe,” we find in a late Detroit Post, the following:—

“Art and politics have become singularly and unpleasantly mixed in Europe, and both in Paris and St. Petersburg music is now judged from the political point of view. At the last popular concert of M. Pasdeloup, in Paris, the orchestra played Wagner’s overture to “Rienzi,” as artists, and then, as Frenchmen, turned round and hissed it, and have now flatly refused to play any more German music, not objecting to it from an artistic point of view, but simply because it is German. The public have indorsed the musicians, and refuse to hear any more German music; and M. Pasdeloup has been obliged to make a public announcement that for the present all music will be adapted to French patriotism. As the French have scarcely ever had a musician who was not of German birth or German education, they, of course, are reduced to a meager lot of indifferent music. Mallinger, the famous rival of Lucca in Berlin, has been hissed in St. Petersburg, partly because she bears a German name and partly because she belongs to the Berlin Opera House.”

“The jealousy and hatred of everything German in Russia is rapidly increasing. A correspondent of the Augsburg Gazette explains that Lucca was not hissed at St. Petersburg because she is half Italian by birth; but as Lucca, at the time of her Prussian season, belonged to the Berlin Opera House, as her repertoire is very largely German, as her successes have been principally made in Germany, as she was for a long time the favorite singer of the Prussian court, and sufficiently a favorite of Bismarck to be photographed side by side with him, and as she married a German military officer, the Baron Von Rahden, the point made by the Russians is more nice than sensible. The facts only show what an extent of political bitterness exists where a people refuse to listen to music, which is of no nationality, but a universal language, because it happens to be produced by their opponents.”