London, but if it had not been given a comic operetta flavor by its
title and association with the name of the excellent Mr. Farnie,
would the change in supposed time, place and people have harmed it?

A few years ago I read (with amusement, of course) of the
metamorphosis to which Massenet's "Herodiade" was subjected so that
it might masquerade for a brief space on the London stage; but when
I saw the opera in New York "in the original package" (to speak
commercially), I could well believe that the music sounded the same
in London, though John the Baptist sang under an alias and the
painted scenes were supposed to delineate Ethiopia instead of
Palestine.

There is a good deal of nonsensical affectation in the talk about
the intimate association in the minds of composers of music, text,
incident, and original purpose. "Un Ballo in Maschera," as we see
it most often nowadays, plays in Nomansland; but I fancy that its
music would sound pretty much the same if the theatre of action
were transplanted back to Sweden, whence it came originally, or
left in Naples, whither it emigrated, or in Boston, to which highly
inappropriate place it was banished to oblige the Neapolitan
censor. So long as composers have the habit of plucking feathers
out of their dead birds to make wings for their new, we are likely
to remain in happy and contented ignorance of mesalliances between
music and score, until they are pointed out by too curious critics
or confessed by the author. What is present habit was former custom
to which no kind or degree of stigma attached. Bach did it; Handel
did it; nor was either of these worthies always scrupulous in
distinguishing between meum and tuum when it came to appropriating
existing thematic material. In their day the merit of individuality