"Paradise Lost," the text paraphrased from portions of Milton's
epic, is an oratorio pure and simple. It deals with the creation of
the world according to the Mosaic (or as Huxley would have said,
Miltonic) theory and the medium of expression is an alternation of
recitatives and choruses, the latter having some dramatic life and
a characteristic accompaniment. It is wholly contemplative; there
is nothing like action in it. "The Tower of Babel" has action in
the restricted sense in which it enters into Mendelssohn's
oratorios, and scenic effects which would tax the utmost powers of
the modern stage-machinist who might attempt to carry them out. A
mimic tower of Babel is more preposterous than a mimic temple of
Dagon; yet, unless Rubinstein's stage directions are to be taken in
a Pickwickian sense, we ought to listen to this music while looking
at a stage-setting more colossal than any ever contemplated by
dramatist before. We should see a wide stretch of the plain of
Shinar; in the foreground a tower so tall as to give color of
plausibility to a speech which prates of an early piercing of
heaven and so large as to provide room for a sleeping multitude on
its scaffoldings. Brick kilns, derricks, and all the apparatus and
machinery of building should be on all hands, and from the summit
of a mound should grow a giant tree, against whose trunk should
hang a brazen shield to be used as a signal gong. We should see in
the progress of the opera the bustling activity of the workmen, the
roaring flames and rolling smoke of the brick kilns, and witness
the miraculous spectacle of a man thrown into the fire and walking
thence unharmed. We should see (in dissolving views) the dispersion
of the races and behold the unfolding of a rainbow in the sky. And,
finally, we should get a glimpse of an open heaven and the Almighty
on His throne, and a yawning hell, with Satan and his angels