Unfortunately the music of the chorus was moulded on the Italian text, and each verse ended with the accent on the antepenult, which occurs frequently in German and Italian, but never in French.

And they sing: Quel est l'auDAcieux Qui dans ces SOMbres lieux Ose porTER ses pas Et devant LE trepas Ne fremit pas?
As French is not strongly accented such faults are tolerated.

Gluck's theme impressed itself on the memory, so that he dealt a terrific blow to the purity of prosody.

We gradually became so disinterested in this that by Auber's time scarcely any attention was paid to it.

Finally, Offenbach appeared.