The New Orleans Crescent

Rossini's Birthday Festival.

Rossini, still living in good health at Paris, has a birthday but once in four years. On the 29th of February he celebrated his nineteenth birthday (his age is seventy-six) by a leap year dinner party, at which there were interesting ceremonies, described by a correspondent as follows:

'Four large tables were covered with bouquets of the most gigantic size, with telegrams from everywhere, letters from people who never knew him-all rejoicing in the great master completing his seventy-sixth year. Smoked Belgian tongues and English jewels, as well as Italian fruit, etc., were amongst the offerings. The large dining table, at which fourteen guests sat down, was in itself an exhibition of the rarest delicacies, sent from the south and north of Europe. On one end an immense cake, built up four feet high with spun sugar, oranges and flowers, a brilliant heart at the top with the inscription: Bonheur santé, 1868,' sent by the Baroness Rothschild. On the other end, a cake with Rossini's bust in sugar, surrounded by figures representing his most popular operas, and flowers and garlands leading down to a most cleverly contrived lake, on which a swan (of Pesaro) stretched its graceful neck, and which was sent by the princess of B. The dinner, which always begins with macaroni, carefully chosen by the master himself, who knows as well the secrets of gastronomy as of harmony, and which went through the unavoidable entrees to the entremets, until at last it reaches the jaisan truffe de rigueur, arrosee with the best wines the richest proprietors of all Europe (including sovereigns) send him continually, was as lively as may be expected--Gustave Doré, who prepares himself for English hospitality, contriving some remembrances from his new English grammar; Madame Faure, who speaks English wonderfully well, chafing him mercilessly; Madame Alboni, by the by, promising to come to England to thank her old friends for their kind remembrance, when, perhaps, she may be induced to give a proof of her voice being still in the most marvelous condition; and so on. But even the best dinner comes at last to the dessert, and at that moment M. Berryer rose and said:

'My dear Rossini -I am desirous to wish you good health. I obey from the bottom of my heart your friends, who, happy in admiring you, are proud of the opportunity afforded them of loving you, and who aspire only to preserve your friendship. We celebrate this day, when you were born an illustration of his power. You have given to the world for the honor of man, and for your own, and we can hope no more from the future than that it will robe itself with the flowers and the great works of your predecessors by your ship. We celebrate this day, when you were born, leaves of your crown. You may count added years without fearing them. They will be ever young with the memory of the eternal youth of your genius and of your triumphs.'

This speech met with-a tribute from one of the greatest orators living, spoken with all his heart, his piercing eye penetrating his hearers, he himself a man of 79 years. Of course there was not wanting the necessary emotion; and, as the company got rather serious, Gustave Doré, taking the sugar heart with 'Bonheur santé,' from the cake, asked, in a timid inquiring murmur: 'Y-at-il en Angleterre du bonheur 'sans the?' Of course this pun set everyone laughing, and the evening guests beginning to arrive in large numbers, the party retired to the drawing-room.'