brothers, and country--"Champs eternels, Hebron, douce vallee." It
was not until our own day that an author with a perverted sense
which had already found gratification in the stench of mental,
moral, and physical decay exhaled by "Salome" and "Elektra" nosed
the piquant, pungent odor of the episode of Potiphar's wife and
blew it into the theatre. Joseph's temptress did not tempt even the
prurient taste which gave us the Parisian operatic versions of the
stories of Phryne, Thais, and Messalina. Richard Strauss's
"Josephslegende" stands alone in musical literature. There is,
indeed, only one reference in the records of oratorio or opera to
the woman whose grovelling carnality is made the foil of Joseph's
virtue in the story as told in the Book. That reference is found in
a singular trilogy, which was obviously written more to disclose
the possibilities of counterpoint than to set forth the story--even
if it does that, which I cannot say; the suggestion comes only from
a title. In August, 1852, Pietro Raimondi produced an oratorio in
three parts entitled, respectively, "Putifar," "Giuseppe giusto,"
and "Giacobbe," at the Teatro Argentina, in Rome. The music of the
three works was so written that after each had been performed
separately, with individual principal singers, choristers, and
orchestras, they were united in a simultaneous performance. The
success of the stupendous experiment in contrapuntal writing was so
great that the composer fell in a faint amidst the applause of the
audience and died less than three months afterward.

In the course of this study I have mentioned nearly all of the
Biblical characters who have been turned into operatic heroes.
Nebuchadnezzar appeared on the stage at Hamburg in an opera of
Keiser's in 1704; Ariosti put him through his bovine strides in
Vienna in 1706. He was put into a ballet by a Portuguese composer