1808-1855.
Gérard Labrunie, known in letters as Gérard de Nerval, was one of the
group of young Romanticists who gathered around Hugo. Symptoms of
insanity developed early, and at different times he was an inmate
of an asylum. He finally committed suicide. He felt profoundly the
influence of German literature, and his lyrics show something of this
in the spiritual quality of their sentiment.
Works: _Élégies nationales et satires politiques_, 1827; translation
of Goethe's _Faust_, 1828; _la Bohême galante_, 1856; _Oeuvres
completes_, 5 vols., 1868.
For reference: Th. Gautier, _Histoire du romantisme_; _Portraits et
souvenirs littéraires_; Arvède Barine, _Névrosés_, 1898.
140. FANTAISIE. Gioacchino Antonio ROSSINI (1792-1868), one of the
foremost Italian composers of the century, author of William Tell
(1829), and other well-known operas. Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART was a
native of Austria, and one of the greatest musical geniuses that ever
lived. Among his works are the operas _Le Nozze di Figaro_ (1786),
_Don Giovanni_ (1787), _Die Zauberflöte_ (1791); the famous _Requiem_;
the _symphony in G minor_, etc. Karl Maria von WEBER (1786-1826),
one of the founders of German as opposed to Italian opera. _Der
Freischütz_ is his most famous work.