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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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