have been not more than three or four actresses in the last hundred
years combining the great tragic and vocal requirements exacted by the
part. If the tragic genius of Pasta conld have been united with the
voice of a Catalani, made as it were of adamant and gold, Cherubini's
sublime musical creation would have found an adequate interpreter.
Mdlle. Tietjens, indeed, has been the only late dramatic singer who
dared essay so difficult a task. Musical students rank the instrumental
parts of this opera with the organ music of Bach, the choral fugues
of Handel, and the symphonies of Beethoven, for beauty of form and
originality of ideas.

On its first representation, on the 13th of March, 1797, one of the
journals, after praising its beauty, professed to discover imitations
of Méhul's manner in it. The latter composer, in an indignant rejoinder,
proclaimed himself and all others as overshadowed by Cherubini's genius:
a singular example of artistic humility and justice. Three years after
its performance in Paris, it was given at Berlin and Vienna, and stamped
by the Germans as one of the world's great musical masterpieces. This
work was a favorite one with Schubert, Beethoven, and Weber, and
there have been few great composers who have not put on record their
admiration of it.

As great, however, as "Médée" is ranked, "Les Deux Journées,"* produced
in 1800, is the opera on which Cherubim's fame as a dramatic composer
chiefly rests.

* In German known as "Die Wassertràger," in English "The
Water-Carriers."

Three hundred consecutive performances did not satisfy Paris; and