The title of the oldest opera extant is " Eurydice." Its classic characters little prophetic of the motley crowd which has followed in its wake. The all-comprising field has been as wide as the heavens above and the earth beneath and the waters under the earth, and fancy has been called upon to supplement with beings indigenous to none of these. For opera the Bible has opened its pages to give up its most picturesque figures ; hosts of angels have descended from heaven to foil the wicked and reward the good ; the gods and goddesses have voiced their mighty passions in aria and recitative; history has furnished manifold actors and incidents, from a Roman emperor exhibiting in himself a grotesque combination of self-satisfied pedantry and monstrous tyranny, to a benevolent, sham-despising cobbler of Nuremburg; romance has been lured from its quiet retreat within the covers of a book, to gay trappings and the glare of the calcium; almost the entire Shakespearean band have had their immortal sentiments transferred to a place below the staff; for opera the walls of fairyland have fallen down to set free its dainty citizens; the grave has given up its sheeted dead, who have marched forward with sepulchral moanings and the rattling of dry bones ; gnomes, sprites and genii have appeared at a wave of the conductor's wand; numberless witches have broken down for mortals the confines of the natural and have dispensed love potions as freely as wine in Capri ; the devil himself has assumed conventional garments and taken a singing part; the fairy tales of child-hood have come to life; birds and beasts have been dowered with the power of speech and prophecy; marble statues have repeatedly taken. life at crucial moments and sauntered from their pedestals. The enumeration is tempting in itself and takes one far afield from "Eurydice."

When the dawn of the Seventeenth Century was beginning to streak the clearing sky of the Renaissance, a little group of friends formed the habit of meeting at the palace of Giovanni Bardi, Count di Vernio, in Florence. It is safe to say that the discourse was interesting, for the company was far from commonplace. Beside the host there was Vincenzo Galileo, father of the great astronomer (and witness the debt of science to the " Heavenly Maid "— the tube of the first telescope constructed by the son was an old organ pipe cast off by the musical parent) ; Bernardo Strozzi, and Girolamo Mei, aristocratic dilettanti ; the poet, Ottavio Rinuccini, and the musicians, Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri, Giacomo Corsi and Emilio del Cavaliere La Camerata, as they called themselves. Now, a deep regard for anything which had come down from classic times was one of the phases of the Renaissance. This attitude is not hard to understand in the light of the simple grandeur of the sculpture and poetry which the ages have left as a legacy, but the ancient canons of the less tangible art of music could only be conjectured from certain allusions in classical literature. From these, La Camerata came to the conclusion that it was at least probable that " the ancient Greeks and Romans sang their tragedies throughout upon the stage," accompanied by an orchestra of lyres and flutes. Must Michaelangelo and Ariosto work alone for the world? Not while La Camerata existed ! And what could be better worth the effort than a revival of that stately entertainment for which AEschylus and Sophocles were librettists? " Dafne," by the way, was written and produced in 1597, but its score has been lost. In 1600, Rinuccini wrote a poem, with very obvious appropriateness choosing the story of the musician Orpheus, whose strains, if we may believe all we are told, remain to the present day unrivaled in potency. Both Peri and Caccini put it to music, but evidently the setting of Peri accorded better with the ideals of the coterie, for when festivities were arranged to celebrate the marriage of Henry IV. of France to Marie di Medici, it was chosen for presentation. We know little of the costumes or the stage setting and effects of the premier performance, but we do know that the composer sang the hero's role, that back of the scenes Signor Corsi presided at the harpsichord, and that three of his friends played upon the chitarroni or guitar, the lira grande or viol da gamba, and the theorbo or large lute, and that three flutes were used in the ritornelle, in which the shepherd is supposed to play upon the triple pipe. We know that each of the five acts concluded with a chorus, and that the dialogue was in recitative. We know, too, that no later offering of pageantry and tunefulness has been accorded greater acclamation. What an amusing whimsy of fortune that the origin of opera as it exists today should be due to an accident ! How absurdly unconscious were La Camerata of the fact that they had failed utterly to revive the ancient Greek musical declamation, but that they had hit upon some-thing quite new, a form of which the " Ring of the Nibelung " is a lineal descendant.

In " Eurydice " was contained the great principle of the modern opera, that the music should be subservient to the emotional meaning of the text ; the recitative was discovered, a medium between speech and melody which is the basis of the lyric drama, with all its forms, indeed, foreshadowed. It was the reversal of the usual order of things; the would-be imitators were inventors.

Between the age of Pericles and that of the Renaissance, music and the drama occasionally had been associated, crudely, it is true. We have record of a certain " Robin and Marion," which was given at the court of Charles d'Artois in Naples in 1285, which seems to have been remarkably similar to the ballad opera that has preserved its popularity after a long career. For this the composer, Adam de la Halle, took a number of the songs of the day, arranged them to form a story and connected them by a dialogue of his own invention. Quite similar are the madrigal plays of a slightly later period.

In 1581, " Circe," a ballet opera, was performed at the Louvre to celebrate a royal wedding. The masques, which were dramatic entertainments based upon mythological or allegorical subjects, combined with their poetry and dancing occasional vocal or instrumental music, one written and arranged by Ben Johnson being quite operatic in conception. The fact remains, however, that since the opera was not an evolution, these instances are of little significance in its history.

Seven years later, at Mantua, the marriage of Margherita, Infanta of Savoy, to Francesco Gonzaga, was celebrated by the production of other operas, one of these "Arianna," the libretto again by Rinuccini, and the music by Claudio Monteverde, chapel master of the bridegroom's father, the Duke of Mantua. It was written in the new " expressivo style " (recitative), which had been found to invest the words with a dramatic power which can be obtained in no other way. The following year, Monteverde produced his " Orfeo," which was a remarkable advance over Peri's treatment. The composer was a man of initiative who never had been convinced that nothing was good unless it had first been thought of by the Greeks. He had a number of ideas of his own concerning the orchestra, and in " Orfeo " over thirty instruments accompanied the lamentations of his hero, or voiced the shrieks of the demons as he drew " his halfregain'd Eurydice " along the flaming passages of the nether world. These, to particularize, were two harpsichords, two bass viols, several viols "da brazzio," a double harp, two small French violins, two chitarroni, two organi di legno (sets of wooden pipes), three viols da gamba, four trombones, one regale (folding organ), two cornetti (wooden horns), one flute, one trumpet, and three sordeni (muted trumpets). A conception so vast naturally crowned Monteverde with glory and dowered him with numerous pupils and imitators. The expense of such productions being great, they were designed only for the edification of princes, and as yet the people had no taste of opera.

Lusty growth became discernible in the infant form. For instance, two new orchestral effects had been introduced by Monteverde, the pizzicato of plucked strings, and the violin tremolo. Alessandro Scarlatti, founder of the great Neapolitan school, and the most learned musician of the day, divided dramatic expression into three forms — recitative secco, or unaccompanied, for the ordinary business of the stage; recitative stromento, or accompanied, for the expression of deep emotion; and the aria, for impassioned soliloquy. In 1647, the opera reached Paris, which was destined to be the scene of many of its later triumphs and reforms. The first opera to be performed there was Peri's " Eurydice," which remained in favor despite newer developments. The performance was under the patronage of Cardinal Mazarin, who was thanked very poorly one hundred and fifty years later by being made the villain in one of Cherubini's compositions.

Robert Cambert, against whom the intriguing Jean Baptiste Lully contrived so effectually, tried his hand at the new music, his " Pomone and " The Pains and Pleasures of Love " being still extant. Lully, taking his predecessor's operatic form as he found it, wrote twenty operas in less than that number of years, reflecting the manners and tone of the French court. In the history of the opera, this shrewd gentleman is important for having put the French school on a firm basis, and for the invention of the overture, then consisting of a prelude, a fugue, and a dance movement.

Why foolishly insist upon the absence of wise deeds in the career of Charles II., when it was he who sent Pelham Humphries over to Paris to study the opera from Lully?

Inspired by his recitals, Henry Purcell, England's greatest musical genius, in 1680 wrote the first English opera, " Dido and AEneas," its libretto being from the pen of Nahum Tate, the poet laureate of the time. Its merits were first submitted to a young ladies' boarding school kept by Jonas Priest in Leicester Fields. Evidently the verdict of the youthful feminine mind was held in high esteem in those days. The verdict must have been satisfactory, at any rate, for, as Dryden assures us, So ceased the rival crew when Purcell came; They sung no more, or only sung his name.

Operatic growth was somewhat hindered in music-loving Germany by the exigencies of the Thirty Years War, and for many years Hamburg was the only German town where opera found a haven. It was for the free city that Handel wrote his earliest works. Afterward, when he had made a conquest of Italy and was acknowledged the fore-most composer of his age, he went to London, where he produced his famous " Rinaldo " at the Queen's Theater in the Haymarket. Here he wrote many of his forty-one operas and became the favorite of the town, until, in deep disgust at the bankruptcy brought on by the machinations of his enemy Buononcini, he discarded the form and took to writing the oratorios for which his special stamp of genius had suited him. But the Hamburg Theater is chiefly indebted to Reinhard Keiser, who composed over one hundred and twenty operas and gave his labors inspiration in spite of this dangerous fecundity.

And now that opera was getting well past the century mark, we find that those who presided over its destinies had lost sight of the important fact that simplicity is beauty. It had become seriously disfigured by embellishment and overelaboration. No one was amazed when, in the most dramatic situations, the action was suspended while the hero or heroine indulged in displays of vocalism in whose tangles emotion gasped and finally gave up the ghost. It had come to a pass where composer and librettist might well collaborate without any knowledge of each other's ideas, so little did the first consider the second. It is not strange that one Signor Marcello, drawing up plans and specifications for an ideal composer, mentioned with some sarcasm, an entire ignorance of poetry, and an inability to distinguish the sense of the discourse. So far had consistency been lost sight of, that in Hamburg, AEneas, perchance in private life a citizen of Venice, voiced his sentiments in his own Italian and received the reproaches of a Teutonic Dido in good gutteral German, and no one fancied it in the least ludicrous. Then, too, in the course of events, something like a vocal tyranny had become evident, and the composer was compelled to minister to the caprice or limitations of the singer at the expense of his own convictions. But rebellion was uprearing its hitherto drowsy head, and while he who was to lead the fray was pondering upon "the abuses introduced by the injudicious vanity of singers," the thoroughly vexed Handel was holding his prima donna, Signora Cuzzoni, out of a high window in the hope of bringing her to a more proper mind to appreciate the dictates of art. And while opera was crying aloud to be digged from the pit into which it had fallen, orle Christoph Willibald Gluck was busily engaged in writing twenty works, strictly adhering to the accepted style.

At last Gluck looked up from his labors and discerned the truth. He was then well along in life; he was over sixty before he gave to the world the full expression of his theories. Like the majority of mankind, he learned his most valuable lessons through bitter experience. He went to England in 1746, where he produced " Piramo and Tisbe," a pasticcio, or hybrid affair made up of selections from earlier works. Having no unity or intrinsic worth, it was naturally a wretched failure. It was, nevertheless, similar to the typical Italian opera, which had been degraded to little more than a miscellaneous concert with a thread of plot running through it.

Gluck was a great original thinker and innovator; he recognized the good in everything pertaining to his art; he knew how to assimilate the best; unlike Mozart, he trusted to nothing like intuition, but must have the why and where-fore. He was a passionate lover of nature, which means that he despised the artificial. In consequence of this rare combination of traits, he was able to do this for the opera : He treated it as an integral whole for the first time ; he made it individual, with a character and atmosphere of its own; he developed the overture, making it a foreshadowing of the play, a thing designed, to quote his own words, " to prepare the spectator for the character of the piece." He gave the chorus its proper place in the drama; he did away with recitative secco and restored the aria to its pristine simplicity. To the orchestra, by which he secured hitherto undreamed of effects, he added clarinets, harps, trombones, and percussion instruments, and banished the harpsichord to the garret, where Handel had practiced surreptitiously upon its cousin, the clavichord.

Gluck began the task of cleaning out the Augean stables with his opera " Orfeo," which, brought out in 1762, placed him at the head of all living opera composers. It may have been to make his exposition the more vivid that he chose for this, the oldest opera now remaining in repertoire, the same legendary episode that Peri had treated in the first of all the operas. Strange to say, he followed with several works in the old style, which can only be explained as pot-boilers. But in 1767 appeared "Alceste," in which he completely embodied his theories. That these reformatory measures were in no manner without intention is proved in the dedication of this work, addressed to the Duke of Tuscany by " Y. R. H.'s most humble, most devoted, most obliged servant."

" I seek to put music to its true purpose, that is, to support the poem, and thus to strengthen the expression of the feeling and the interest of the situation without interrupting the action. I have, therefore, refrained from interrupting the actor in the fervor of his dialogue by introducing the accustomed tedious ritornelle, nor have I broken his phrase at an opportune vowel that the flexibility of a fine voice might be exhibited in a lengthy flourish ; nor have I written phrases for the orchestra to afford the singer an opportunity to take a long breath preparatory to the accepted flourishes. Nor have I dared to hurry over the second part of an aria when such contained the passion and most important matter, to find myself in accord with the conventional repeat of the same phrase four times. As little have I permitted myself to close an aria where the sense was incomplete, solely to afford the singer an opportunity of introducing a cadenza. In short, I have striven to abolish all those bad habits against which sound reasoning and true taste have been struggling now for so long in vain."

In 1770, " Paris and Helen " was produced in the new lines. All this had occurred in Vienna, which remained quite unmoved and uninterested, and so lost its opportunity to be the seat of an important revolution.

Gluck went to Paris in 1773, where the battle that was to fill his declining years with adventure was waged. One cannot help fancying that it was not altogether distasteful to this energetic, quick tempered, humorous, witty, politic, staunch master. A number of his new works were performed, and in 1774, for the first time, " Iphigenia in Aulis." He became a hero. A night at the opera was so brilliant, so momentous, that exra police were detailed ; Marie Antoinette gave him her patronage ; aristocratic gentlemen were flattered to help him on with his surtout or hand him his wig after a performance; he was granted a pension of six thousand livres, and the critics used no faint praise for his damnation.

But the way of the reformer is seldom a road in Arcady. He was not to snap his fingers in the face of long-established conventions without causing trouble. The old had loyal sup-porters. Many there were who called his work crude and untuneful, and said that it was absurd to put to music some of the things he did. They added to his discredit that deadliest of sins to a Frenchman, tiresomeness. These doubting Parisians were as bad as the Viennese who had dubbed his "Alceste " a " De Profundis."

But the conservatives paid him the compliment to send to Italy for ammunition. This came back in the person of Niccola Piccini, the foremost composer of the day. For dramatic considerations, it is to be regretted that this champion and exponent of Italian opera was so small, mild mannered and unfailingly polite, a creature so sensitive that, when a child, the mere sight of a clavichord had made him faint with emotion, for otherwise we could witness with greater delight the assault of the big, bluff, sarcastic Gluck. Perhaps it is his compensation that, as a principal in this, the most picturesque contest in the history of music, his memory has been kept green, while otherwise it might be relegated to the oblivion which awaited his operas. To be fair, credit must be accorded to Piccini for the development of the operatic finale, in which remarkable effect was secured by uniting the various voices in rich harmony.

They performed their rival pieces and all Paris took sides. The war in America was forgotten. The whispered question was not " Whig or Tory? " It was " Gluckist or Piccinist ? " And beware of the answer. Life long friendships were sacrificed upon the altar of argument; all the wits and litterateurs were ranged, and bon mots were scattered with prodigality. Dozens of them have come down for our delectation. There is no record of the actual spilling of blood, but no weapon can inflict such keen discomfort as the lash of sarcasm. It was a serious business and one who took a hand in it merely to be fashionable was likely to be sorry for it. This was the case with the Chevalier de Castellux, a gentleman not remarkable for mental equipment, who, when he attempted to discuss the matter with Gluck's admirer, the Marquis de Clermont, was discomfited by the reply, " I will -sing you an air, and if you are capable of beating correct time to it, I will discuss Gluck with you."

There are many great names on the roster of this operatic war. Of the Gluckists, Marie Antoinette, who had been his pupil in Vienna; the Abbé Arnaud, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau; on the other side, Marmontel, La Harpe, Madame Du Barry, d'Alembert, Framery, Coqueau, some of whom figured tragically a little later in the greatest of all revolutions.

Although the Queen was at heart with Gluck, she made a laudable effort to be impartial. It was agreed that each should write an opera upon " Iphigenia in Tauris " and fight it out upon the same ground. Gluck's work was produced in 1779 and proved his masterpiece and the most satisfactory exposition of his ideas. Piccini's appeared some time later and suffered sadly in comparison. Gluck, who had with him the spirit of the age, had won in the battle of the natural against the artificial.

It took a number of years for the world to learn that it was not sacrilege to smile within the precincts of the opera. The thought of mirth was far removed from the mighty business of the gods, which formed the almost invariable subject of these works. Ordinary human life had never been reflected in any aspect. But mankind gropes after laughter as surely as the dawn follows the dark, and in the Eighteenth Century we find between the acts of serious operas, musical interludes in lighter vein, to afford the relaxation which the audience craved. These were evolved from the burlesques and puppet shows, which may in turn be traced to antiquity. It grew to be the custom for the same characters to figure in these intermezzi, and then it occurred to some one to unite them into one piece. It was done. Opera buffa had been originated and had been promoted to the rank of an independent institution. The people were more than consoled to have " Orpheus and Eurydice," " Theseus and Ariadne," " Paris and Helen," replaced by the very people they might have known, whose emotions they could understand without any exercise of imagination ; the saucy serving maid, the crusty old bachelor, the ringletted damsel with whom it would not be too difficult to fancy a flirtation. That opera buffa achieved a speedy and unqualified popularity it is scarcely necessary to state, for it was the amusement of the people. Then, too, the monarchial sway of serious opera had been endangered by the conventional absurdities which had come to mar it. Providence was working in the usual mysterious way, and the abuses to which this musical form had been put led the people to take refuge in the new form as surely as they caused the reforms of Gluck.

Some musical entertainment of a lighter character had antedated opera buffa, and, in 1639, a musical comedy by Mazzocchi and Marazzoli was performed in Florence, the poet Milton being present to applaud its Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles.

One of the most famous of these promoted intermezzi was Pergolesi's " La Serva Padrone," which for a century was looked upon as its most admirable example. It was taken to Paris in 1750 and may be said to have founded the school of French opera comique, essentially a French creation, and which, in stage terminology, has come to mean any opera with spoken dialogue, no matter how serious the subject.

Previous to this, musical pantomime occasionally had enlivened French fairs and festivals. Its more ambitious form was received with such acclamation that the advocates of the serious school remonstrated and a " war of the buffons " was waged. The first true comic opera, " Le Devin du Village," was produced by the famous Rousseau and performed at the Académie de Musique. Monsigny placed opera comique on a firmer basis by fusing the merits of the French and Italian schools, and Gretry, with his fifty or more works, carried it to a yet higher plane.

In Germany any dramatic entertainment in which music and dialogue alternated was known as singspiel or song-play, and, as such, still has a regular place on the German stage. John Adam Hiller was the first to cultivate the Teutonic prototype of the comic opera.

The movement became evident in England with the ballad opera, which today in every quarter of the globe retains its standing as a popular entertainment. " The Beg-gar's Opera " was the most famous of the lot, attaining to a popularity unrivaled before or since, even by its charming descendants, the Gilbert-Sullivan operettas. It is a keen satire on the politicians and courtiers of that day, and depicts their irregularities in a fashion which must have been more than disconcerting. The dialogue, written by John Gay, is interspersed with sixty-nine English and Scotch ballads arranged and scored by Dr. Pepusch. It was first produced in London, January 29, 1728.

The conventional Italian opera, which impresario Handel was producing at the Haymarket to his own financial ruin, came in with the courtiers for its share of the scoring, which may have added impetus to the reformatory movement that crystallized a number of years later in Gluck. Says the Beggar in the prologue, with his tongue in his cheek, " I hope I may be forgiven that I have not made my opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue."

The rise of opera buffa at this time was fortunate in that it provided for the delicate, human genius of Mozart a more congenial channel than the heavy tragedy which had for so long been held in esteem. He was neither a reformer nor an iconoclast ; he serenely accepted conditions as he found them, and his influence is rather in the light of an inspiration. Gounod has been both preceded and seconded in the rapturous panegyric in which he exclaims of Mozart's masterpiece, " Don Juan," " It has influenced my life like a revelation. It stands in my thoughts like an incarnation of dramatic and musical impeccability." Goethe swears with similar enthusiasm, that one had not lived who has not heard " Don Juan." The story of his operatic career is as quaint and moving as one of his pieces. His first opera, " La Finta Semplice," was written at the age of twelve, after a childhood which reads like a fairy tale. It is hard to imagine how the winsome, affectionate boy could have had enemies who prevented the production of the piece. It is not hard to imagine how the quivering lip and tear-welled eye of the mature composer could touch the Archbishop of Salsburg to arrange a special performance for his consolation after a year which, as we who have been twelve-year-olds well know, may be quite as long as a century. In view of this, we shall have to forgive the Archbishop for his five pound per annum stipend.

" Idomeno," produced in the composer's early manhood, was superior in concerted music and instrumentation to any opera yet written, and practically laid the foundation for modern orchestration. It was Mozart, too, who developed the act-finale which Logroscino had invented. By his three great operas, " Don Juan," " The Marriage of Figaro " and the " Magic Flute," he fused the best of the different national schools, lifting the lyric drama to hitherto unreached heights, and providing a lofty ideal of musical character drawing. As his admirable biographer, Otto Jahn, affirms, " He assembled the traditions of a long period of development and put the finishing stroke to it." In short, the subsequent history of opera would have lost half its luster had not this delicate, simple, improvident, irresponsible, wholly lovable person made the world his habitation for thirty-five years.

While Beethoven contributed nothing essentially new to the opera, its chronicle is scarcely complete without reference to his " Fidelio " (a lonely bachelor's soliloquy on conjugal love), which was produced in Prague in 1805, for between Mozart and Wagner its greatness was unrivaled. Such was the nature of the genius of the " Mighty Ludwig " that he was hampered by the restrictions of the stage, but he nevertheless gave unwearying care to the work. Unfortunately, his text was not of the caliber of " Don Juan," but frequently bourgeois and sentimental, but he brought to it the fulness of his powers, giving to it a deeper and more dramatic expression than any previous composer, and teaching by it that perfection of musical form is not inconsistent with the achievement of the strongest dramatic effect. In spite of its Spanish background, " Fidelio " is thoroughly German. History repeats itself, and the public received this coldly, as it has many other great things. Weber, who man-aged it, cried in disgust, " Bah ! what they want is Punch and Judy!"

Soon after this, romantic opera was crystallized into form in Weber's "Der Frieschütz." It was a token of the same desire to return to nature after the long tyranny of the so-called classical that became apparent in literature at this time. In romantic opera, the people came into their own more thoroughly than ever before. It was founded on the folk-song which is the untrammelled expression of the popular heart. And just as heartily was it welcomed by the composer, for it was less restricted in form than the classical, which, since the days of Gluck, had held sway. Roman-tic, as applied to opera, is a trifle elusive of definition. The works it describes are inspired by the medieval legends and tales of love and chivalry written in the old Romance dialects and in consequence called romances. It is not necessary that they shall deal with the supernatural, though sprites and witches, ghosts and mermaids, are as familiar figures of romance as they are of folk-lore. The text may speak of dashing knights and haughty ladies or deal with the common people. It is equally well at home in the depths of the sylvan vale and at the tournament. Weber, the most national of the German composers, knew the character of his people and embodied it in his music, and in " Der Frieschütz " he formulated a style which has been a model since his day. His use of the leitmotif fairly entitles him to the honor of its invention. Weber believed in the organic union of the various parts of the opera and excelled all his predecessors in the use of the orchestra as a means of dramatic characterization. Among those who followed bravely in his foot-steps were Louis Spohr (1784-1859) and Heinrich Marschner (1796-1861.)

While Mozart, Beethoven and Weber were making history in Germany, we find no names to match theirs in Italy, the cradle of opera. In passing, credit must be given to Cimarosa (the worthiest of the composers between Scarlatti and Rossini), who was equally at home in opera seria and opera buffa, his " Matrimonio Segreto " of the latter sort being a worthy monument to his genius. But the glory of earlier days had departed, and opera had gone far astray from the teachings of Gluck.

Another tyranny of the singer was at hand, and the amazing incongruities to which it gave rise have been the subject of many humorous descriptions. How it was hazardous to speculate as to the relation of the characters upon the stage from any evidence furnished by their actions; how they frequently disregarded each other altogether and addressed themselves entirely to the audience ; how the choruses were a thing apart and without significance, and the halls of Caesar or the vales of Greece, whatever the scene might be, were but an elaborate setting for the skyrockets of the vocalist. Composition was profuse, it is true, but upon false artistic principles.

Out of all this chaos there came to pass a genius, Gioachino Rossini, who as time demonstrated, was without that indispensable attribute of genius, an infinite capacity for taking pains. It is difficult to imagine this debonair Rossini in the role of a reformer. He would doubtless have scouted the idea. He took things very much as he found them, content to minister to a taste diseased, but with what stimulation he infused the palsied forms! With what voluptuous beauty he hid their defects, with " just naked, ear-delighting, delicious, meaningless sound," to quote Wagner, to whom to be meaningless was the worst sin in the calendar. He continued to overornament them like silly women, who would display all their jewels at once. But such jewels had never before been imagined. He did insist upon having his melodies sung as they were written, where-as the Italian singers had considered it altogether proper to deck their arias with extemporized filigree work. Another of his innovations was recitative accompanied by a quartet of strings in place of 'cello and piano. To Rossini the bass singer may trace his emancipation, for until " Tancredi " he had not been granted as much as a place in the background.

The son of the town trumpeter was still young when he had become the " Swan of Pesaro," with nobles for his friends, Prince Metternich for an adviser, and all the rest of Europe at his feet. As a contemporary writes, " he had intoxicated the public." Beethoven had been forgotten for him. Schumann has tried, to do his share toward making up to Beethoven for this temporary oblivion, and likens the two to an eagle and a butterfly. Alas for its permanency, the Rossinian school was based upon incorrect ideas. How-ever, the world is still grateful for the masterpiece, " William Tell," in which are apparent few of Rossini's faults, while his " Barber of Seville " is an admirable piece of opera buffa, possibly the greatest ever written.

When the German critics accused him of corrupting musical art, he made the characteristic reply : " They wish that I composed like Haydn and Mozart. But if I took all the pains in the world, I should still be a wretched Haydn or Mozart. So I prefer to remain a Rossini. Whatever that may be, it is something, and, at least, I am not a bad Rossini." Although, for what reason no one has been able to conjecture, Rossini left the field at thirty-seven, to remain in obstinate retirement for more than half his life, his influence has added many pages to the chronicle of opera. His followers were Donizetti and Bellini, two of the strongest men of the period, who have had an enormous audience. They both were dowered with the power to touch the heart, more indeed than their master. Donizetti was arch and rather dramatic, and both were sweet, tender and sentimental. Especially is this true of Bellini. But the public grew satiated with sweetness, and tenderness, and sentimentality and discovered that under it was lacking a very desirable artistic vitality.

At this juncture, a German Jew named Giacomo Meyer-beer moved from Italy to Paris in eager quest of ideas and set himself busily to the work of composition. But just previous to the appearance of the first of his works, Daniel Auber, one of the most popular of the comic opera writers, produced his "Masaniello " in 1830, and paved the way for the new epoch of grand opera. This work, " white-hot with the breath of the proletariat," was the first realistic drama in five acts to possess the attributes of a tragedy, which was especially disturbing to the Germans, who had always considered it proper to send people home in a comfortable frame of mind. " Masaniello " was in every respect more than casual and, among other things, inspired the uprising in Brussels which brought about the kingdom of Belgium.

Grand opera, however, is associated with the name of Meyerbeer, in whom a transcendent love of pageantry was strangely combined with a personal frugality which amounted almost to niggardliness. Such pomp and fan-fare and splendid processions, such a wealth of scenic and orchestral effect had been conceived by no forerunner. The world had never seen anything as daring as his " Robert the Devil;" as spectacular as his " Prophet," as thrilling and melodramatic as his " Huguenots." France was so dazzled that she did not realize that the national opera was drifting far away from the pure, virile style of Gluck. The foundations upon which Meyerbeer raised his tremendous structures were not as broad and strong as they needed to be. He was too prone to strive for the purely effective. He was praised to the skies during his lifetime and has been under-rated since. It has for years been the fashion to " find him out ;" delight is taken in calling him the charlatan of French opera; but however full of faults he may have been, he is master of dramatic effect, and he did service by loosening the rigid bonds of traditional form.

The Nineteenth Century was full of activity. Names not at all epoch-making were, in France, Ferdinand Boieldieu (1775-1834), whose " La Dame Blanche " was for many years the ever cited classical example of opera comique; Adolphe Adam (1803-1856) ; Victor Masse (1822-1884); Leo Delibes (1836-1891) ; E. Lalo (1823-1892) ; Charles Gounod (1818-1893), famed for his perennial " Faust:" Georges Bizet (1838-1875), known best for his inspired " Carmen, and Ambroise Thomas (1811-1896).

In Germany, in this brief consideration, we must mention Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849), Otto Nicolai (1810-1849), Gustav Lortzing (1801-1851) and Frederick Flotow (1812-1883). In England, the fate of opera lay in the hands of William Vincent Wallace (1814-1865), Michael Balfe (1808-1870) — his " Bohemian Girl " being probably the most popular of modern ballad operas — and Sir Julius Benedict (1804-1885) .

The middle of the Nineteenth Century is remarkable for the appearance of the most important figure in all the three hundred years of opera Richard Wagner who was destined to be a reformer like Gluck, whom he resembles in many respects, chief among them being that he was a good fighter and terribly in earnest. Also, like Gluck, his youth was not without its mistakes. Of these, " Rienzi," written in frank imitation of Meyerbeer (by one who afterward was shown to be the most original of men), is the only one worthy of more than a cursory mention. After its production, the young German sallied forth to Paris, where Lully, Gluck, Piccini, Cherubini, Spontini, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti and the rest of them had gone before him, with high hopes of seeing some of his works produced, and with Meyerbeer's letters of introduction in his pocket. But Paris was cold. She did not realize that he had come; all of which was very fortunate for Wagner as well as for the world, Paris included. Had he received a welcome such as Rossini had enjoyed, it is more than likely that he would have been content to pursue a lucrative career, composing upon the approved conventional lines, and adding many other " Rienzis " to the " whole clinking, twinkling, glittering, glistening show — Grand Opera," as he was later pleased to designate the style then in vogue. But his was a soul which the buffetings of Fortune did not subdue, but instead engendered therein a wholesome spirit of defiance. To the same good end worked his exile in Switzerland, which resulted upon the political troubles of 1848. With the world lost anyhow, he might well write as he pleased. And so he grew steadily, each succeeding opera being an advance upon its predecessors, and a fuller embodiment of the theories which took practical shape in the great cycle, and reached their highest expression in " Tristan and Isolde."

He would have none of the feeble librettos which other composers of the day accepted. He was convinced that " Orpheus' lute was strung with poet's sinews," and to make sure of the quality of the poetry he wrote it himself. He went back, not to Gluck, but as far as 1600, discarding every dramatic tradition which had accumulated in that time, but with the immeasurable advantage over Peri of more than two centuries' development of technique. In truth, he did away with the opera and created a complete organic union, the music drama.

Among the most important of his theories is that the music should be secondary to the drama whose emotional import it should faithfully reflect and intensify, the relation of the poetry to the music being as that of a sketch to the color. He believed it to be essential that the libretto should be worthy, or, of necessity, the music which was built upon it could not be. He claimed that a composer should write his own drama in order that he might be more fully in sympathy with it. Believing that the music should not break or interrupt the action, he did away with all arias, duets, concerted finales and ensembles (with a very few exceptions, notable among which is the opening of Act III in " The Valkyrie "), deeming these unnatural and inartistic. He made use of a melos, or, as it has been variously defined, an endless recitative, a musical declamation, a speech-song, which could be made either melodic or harmonic. He made use of the leading motive, which is a characteristic melody or musical phase, associated with a particular personage and accompanying him throughout the score. He treated the leading motive more consistently and with far greater effect than had any of his occasional predecessors. In his later works, the score is a veritable web, woven out of these various motives. He made a symphonic use of the orchestra, his employment of the leading motive enabling him to give a running commentary on the action, like the chorus in the ancient Greek tragedy, which could refer to past circumstances in the life of the character or even paint his inmost thoughts. In short, he made of the music drama, a form as truly artistic as the symphony or sonata and worthy to take its place beside these unimpeachable forms of abstract music.

Not content with being a composer and a poet, he wrote two volumes, " The Art Work of the Future " (1849) and " Opera and Drama " (1851), in which he explained the theories which he even then fancied pretty fully conceived. In 1857 he solemnly announced that he was done with theorizing, and that his plans were absolutely completed. But each time he was mistaken. Their unconscious, inevitable evolution was not to be fully accomplished for many years.

It is not necessary to state that one who sinned so deeply against preconceived notions, should be vigorously hooted and decried. Censure greeted "The Flying Dutchman," in which he began to find himself; the public called " Tannhauser " ugly and blatant and even stopped its ears to the " Song of the Evening Star ;" in "Lohengrin " (a transitional work), the admiration of a prince who went to such lengths as the construction of a swan barque for his personal navigation failed to bring conviction; the production of the " Ring " caused storms of bitter discussion; when in " Tristan and Isolde " he at last spoke freely, a tempest of abuse broke upon his head. Now this and his incomparable and only comic opera, " The Mastersingers " (pleasantly greeted by the critics as a " monstrous caterwauling ") are reckoned as his masterpieces, alongside of which nothing else is worthy to stand.

The world was hard to reach but its enthusiasm was unbounded when it at last looked over its " Chinese wall of prejudice." So entirely has it accepted the teachings of the " Musician of the Future " that it amounts to a regeneration of the lyric drama. The present day opera public would not tolerate a composer who did not make an honest effort to let his music embody the poet's thought. There is no more singing of such belligerent admonitions as " Go ! or thy blood shall quickly flow " in mellifluous harmony which might well be painting the dreamy loveliness of a summer night. Scarcely a work that has been written since his day does not bear traces of his theories, even the greatest profiting by his example. They have inspired countless volumes of conjecture, discussion, and laudation. The world is willing to say now that the art for which the Nineteenth Century will doubtless be remembered is the musical and dramatic art of Richard Wagner. Truly, " He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus."

However, some there are who have been Wagnerians who have apostatized, and some who look askance at his " muddled metaphysics," and suspect that his orchestration is overpersistent. Whether he is, like Shakespeare, a creature great enough to be " not for an age, but for all time," or instead the precursor of some greater one, is for time to tell.

One of the most virile composers of the Nineteenth Century was Giuseppe Verdi, a man of long life and activity and of growth as continual as Wagner's. His progress was marked by four periods of which " I Lombardi " and " Ernani " are of the first ; " Il Trovatore " and " Rigoletto " of the second ; " Aida " of the third and " Otello " and " Falstaff " of the fourth. This last, his masterpiece, was writ-ten at eighty years of age. In technique, Verdi may show evidence of a heritage of faults received from his immediate predecessors, but he brought to Italian opera a new life and vigor. He is truly national, his operas frequently reflecting political conditions and invariably being unmistakably Italian. He was one of the greatest of dramatic composers, dealing with the most violent human passions and ever with sincerity. The people have claimed him as their own, which is in itself a sound basis for distinction, and some of the elect declare that his last two works are the best existing models of the lyric drama, not excepting those of Wagner.

The Golden Age of grand opera was followed less than a generation after by the Golden Age of operetta. The chronicle of opera buffa in France and Austria was adorned at that time with such names as Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), Alexander Lecocq (1832-), Johann Strauss, the waltz king (18044849), Robert Planquette (1848-1903), Edmond Audran (1842-1901), and Franz von Suppé (1820-1895), while in England Gilbert and Sullivan were writing their delightful series of operettas. The dashing Offenbach brought to the burlesque unusual dignity by bestowing upon it the methods of the serious opera. Rossini called him the Mozart of the Champs Elysées. His immensely popular works are not always models of propriety, but the Second Empire must help to share the blame ; just as Rossini was a reflection of the trivial time in which he wrote.

There is no such criticism possible for the Gilbert-Sullivan creations, those most satisfactory fusions of librettist and composer. They have lost nothing in humorousness by their never-failing refinement and good taste. Messrs. Sullivan and Gilbert have laughed at many solemn institutions, at the House of Lords, the navy, the army, and the police, but their satire never has wounded. The world owes them a great debt for the laughter which their dainty mock heroics have inspired.

A contemplation of the operatic situation today is not altogether a tragical proceeding, and there is no immediate necessity for hanging the harp upon the willow or giving one's self up to jeremiads whose purport is that " Fair Daphne's dead and music is no more." The modern school is indeed sturdy enough to have several characteristics of its own. It has, in the first place, declared against excessive length in operas. It also has taken a decided trend toward realism. It has discarded utterly gods and mermaids, ghosts and dryads as sadly out of date. It is fond of painting the homely scenes of everyday life, and finds sufficient material in the variegated character of the actual world. If it grows tired of squalor or seeks the glamour of another age, it is still realistic, pinning all the sounds of nature to its score with fairly startling effect.

The life which Verdi brought to Italian opera was not extinguished at his death, and the new Italian school is interesting and picturesque. Probably the strongest of its exponents is Giacomo Puccini, a man with true dramatic instinct who already has several excellent works to his credit and others under way, if report be true.

In this respect he is unlike Pietro Mascagni, whose fortunes were made in a day and whose fame still rests almost entirely upon his fiery " Cavalleria Rusticana." Ruggiero Leoncavallo, of " I Pagliacci " fame, is the third upon whom Italy chiefly bases her operatic pride. Richard Strauss of Germany disputes with Puccini the distinction of being the most gifted and scholarly of living composers. More, however, than his contemporary across the Alps does he exhibit in himself the modern condition of the youngest of the arts. He disdains all the canons of the past and has well earned his title of musical anarchist. His daring, accompanied as it is by remarkable genius, has made him the most talked of composer of the day. Of the new army of tone-painters he is the most imaginative and vivid. The noise made by his admirers and detractors is weirdly similar to the battle cries which once echoed about Richard Wagner. Another striking German figure is Engelbert Humperdinck, whose " Hansel and Gretel," an operatic rendition of a nursery tale, not only has attested his originality but has won for him a warm affection in the public heart. Siegfried Wagner, composer of several operas, is not an exception to the rule that famous men seldom have sons who in any way rival them.

The glory of France is upheld by several gifted men. There is Jules Massenet, whose subtle orchestration and sensuous melody disclose the hand of a master; Saint Säens, whose scholarly activities have extended over a period of nearly fifty years; Claude Debussy and Alfred Bruneau, both names of importance, while Gustav Charpentier, whose realistic " Louise " recently set the world to talking, is perhaps the most promising and original of them all.

Michael Glinka (1804-1857), first and greatest, Anton Rubinstein (1830-1894) and Peter Ilitch Tschaikowsky (1840-1893) are the most important names to be considered in connection with Russian work in this line, while Ignace Paderewski represents Polish endeavor. The Russians build upon the Weberian foundation, the folksong, and Russian operas are in consequence distinctly national.

Music in America has been almost as laggard as if it had never lost the depression incurred under the frowns of the Puritans, and while, at last, America is advancing in other musical paths, the page upon which her operatic history is to be written, is as yet almost blank. Since Manuel Garcia and his musical family gave to New York its first season of grand opera in 1825, the country has enjoyed many notable performances, and has given many distinguished singers to the operatic stage. But her composers are conspicuous by reason of their paucity. America has yet to give a thoroughly adequate grand opera to the world. Nevertheless, it is not too optimistic to believe that her many gifted song writers are harbingers of those who will arise to put into music the noble sweep of American plains, the rugged glory of her mountains and cañons and the unostentatious patriotism of her citizens, while her wholesome delight in laughing at herself, her willingness to point out her own weakness, will surely give rise to notable comic opera.

America already has achieved greater success in light opera than in its more serious form. There is cleverness in the music of Reginald de Koven, of Victor Herbert, of Sousa, of Julius Eichberg of " Doctor of Alcantara " fame, and of a score of others. The land has been swept for a number of years by a perfect simoom of so-called musical comedy which fortunately is beginning to show some faint sign of abatement. These ephemeral concoctions require music, but the quality is of little consequence. Any sort of a jolly din will do to balance the boisterous jokes, and accompany the pirouettes of the chorus. One who can devise anything as fantastic as the coming to life and tune-fulness of the most amazing scarecrow which ever distressed a cornfield is greater than he who can write a melody which will live for a generation. We have a Mr. George Ade who pokes fun at national institutions and typifies a peculiarly national humor quite as effectually as Mr. Gilbert, but Mr. Ade is unfortunately as yet a Gilbert without a Sullivan. That a reaction in the musical taste of the public is sure to come is a safe prediction, and it is only a question of time until something better will be demanded for divertisement. Light music has as great a mission in the world as serious, and mere frivolity is the better for a little cleverness. Top of Page