verdi

There’s a barrel-organ caroling across a golden street, In the City as the sun sinks low; Though the music’s only Verdi there’s a world to make it sweet Just as yonder yellow sunset where the earth and heaven meet Mellows all the sooty City!

I have heard an Italian conductor (no longer living) take the adagio of that symphony at a lively allegretto, slowing down for the warmer major sections into the speed and manner of the heroine's death song in a Verdi opera; and the listeners, far from relieving my excruciation by rising with yells of fury and hurling their programs and opera glasses at the miscreant, behaved just as they do when Richter conducts it.