the attainment of artistic perfection. All honour is due to the purely
artistic singers who have reached their position without intrigue, and
whose influence on their colleagues is the best stimulus to wholesome
endeavour. It is beyond question that the greater the proportion of
intelligent hearers in any audience or set of subscribers, the higher
will the standard be, not only in vocalisation, but in that combination
which makes the artist as distinguished from the mere singer. For every
reason, too, it is desirable that opera should be given, as a general
rule, in the language of the country in which the performance takes
place, and although the system of giving each work with its own original
words is an ideally perfect one for trained hearers, yet the
difficulties in the way of its realisation, and the absurdities that
result from such expedients as a mixture of two or more languages in the
same piece, render it practically inexpedient for ordinary operatic
undertakings. The recognition of English as a possible medium of vocal
expression may be slow, but it is certainly making progress, and in the
last seasons at Covent Garden it was occasionally employed even before
the fashionable subscribers, who may be presumed to have tolerated it,
since they did not manifest any disapproval of its use. Since the first
edition of this book was published, the Utopian idea, as it then seemed,
of a national opera for London has advanced considerably towards
realisation, and it is certain that when it is set on foot, the English
language alone will be employed.

While opera is habitually performed in a foreign language, or, if in
English, by those who have not the art of making their words
intelligible, there will always be a demand for books that tell the
story more clearly than is to be found in the doggerel translations of
the libretti, unless audiences return with one accord to the attitude of
the amateurs of former days, who paid not the slightest attention to the