them were borrowed from the composer's "Armida." In 1822 Bochsa
performed it as an oratorio at Covent Garden, but, says John Ebers
in his "Seven Years of the King's Theatre," published in 1828, "the
audience accustomed to the weighty metal and pearls of price of
Handel's compositions found the 'Moses' as dust in the balance in
comparison." "The oratorio having failed as completely as erst did
Pharaoh's host," Ebers continues, "the ashes of 'Mose in Egitto'
revived in the form of an opera entitled 'Pietro l'Eremita.' Moses
was transformed into Peter. In this form the opera was as
successful as it had been unfortunate as an oratorio.... 'Mose in
Egitto' was condemned as cold, dull, and heavy. 'Pietro l'Eremita,'
Lord Sefton, one of the most competent judges of the day,
pronounced to be the most effective opera produced within his
recollection; and the public confirmed the justice of the remark,
for no opera during my management had such unequivocal success."
[Footnote: "Seven Years of the King's Theatre," by John Ebers, pp.
157, 158.] This was not the end of the opera's vicissitudes, to
some of which I shall recur presently; let this suffice now:

Rossini rewrote it in 1827, adding some new music for the Academie
Royal in Paris, and called it "Moise"; when it was revived for the
Covent Garden oratorios, London, in 1833, it was not only performed
with scenery and dresses, but recruited with music from Handel's
oratorio and renamed "The Israelites in Egypt; or the Passage of
the Red Sea"; when the French "Moise" reached the Royal Italian
Opera, Covent Garden, in April, 1850, it had still another name,
"Zora," though Chorley does not mention the fact in his "Thirty
Years' Musical Recollections," probably because the failure of the
opera which he loved grieved him too deeply. For a long time
"Moses" occupied a prominent place among oratorios. The Handel and