The Opera A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions of all Works in the Modern Repertory.

If one were set upon paradox, it would not be far from the truth to say that up to the middle of the nineteenth century the most famous French composers had been either German o...

The death of Verdi occurred so recently that it is still possible to speak of him as representing the music of modern Italy in its noblest and most characteristic manifestation,...

The attempt to divide the life and work of a composer into fixed periods is generally an elusive and unsatisfactory experiment, but to this rule the case of Wagner is an excepti...

Soon after the death of Purcell, the craze for Italian opera seems to have banished native art completely from the English stage. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the...

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is by far the most important figure in the history of modern opera. With regard to the intrinsic beauty of his works, and the artistic value of the th...

The romantic movement was essentially German in its origin, but its influence was not bounded by the Rhine. As early as 1824 Weber's 'Freischütz' was performed in Paris, followe...

Although Mozart's (1756-1791) earliest years were passed at Salzburg, the musical influences which surrounded his cradle were mainly Italian. Salzburg imitated Vienna, and Vienn...

The death of Lulli left French opera established upon a sure foundation. The form which he perfected seemed, with all its faults, to commend itself to the genius of the nation,...

The history of music furnishes more than one instance of the paralysing effect which the influence of a great genius is apt to exercise upon his contemporaries and immediate suc...

While Weber was reconstructing opera in Germany and laying the foundations upon which the vast structure of modern lyrical drama was afterwards reared by the composers of our ow...

Although, for the sake of convenience, it is customary to speak of Weber as the founder of the romantic school in music, it must not be imagined that the new school sprang into...

The early history of many forms of art is wrapped in obscurity. Even in music, the youngest of the arts, the precise origin of many modern developments is largely a matter of co...

Mozart and Gluck, each in his respective sphere, carried opera to a point which seemed scarcely to admit of further development. But before the advent of Weber and the romantic...

While Gluck was altering the course of musical history in Vienna, another revolution, less grand in scope and more gradually accomplished, but scarcely less important in its res...