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TOC
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thoughts on various subjects, would
be but ill received by the public.
One of these gentlemen performers
was old enough to remember very well
the celebrated Benedetto Marcello, who
has been dead forty-four years, and gave
me several anecdotes about him; his fa-
mily, which is noble, still subsists,
and the head of it is now ambassador
from the Venetian state at the Porte.
11th. This afternoon I went again to
the Pietà; there was not much company,
and the girls played a thousand tricks in
singing, particularly in the duets, where
there was a trial of skill and of natural
powers, as who could go highest, lowest,
swell a note the longest, or run divisions
with the greatest rapidity. They always
finish with a symphony; and last Wed-
nesday they played one composed by
Sarte, which I had before heard in Eng-
land, at the opera of the Olimpiade.
The band here is certainly very power-
ful, as there are in the hospital above
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