however, from the fact that Paisiello had acquainted them with the
beginning of the story. Paisiello's opera is dead, but Rossini's is
very much alive, and it might prove interesting, some day, to have
the two living operas brought together in performance in order to
note the effect produced upon each other by comparison of their
scores. One effect, I fancy, would be to make the elder of the
operas sound younger than its companion, because of the greater
variety and freshness, as well as dramatic vigor, of its music. But
though the names of many of the characters would be the same, we
should scarcely recognize their musical physiognomies. We should
find the sprightly Rosina of "Il Barbiere" changed into a mature
lady with a countenance sicklied o'er with the pale cast of a gentle
melancholy; the Count's tenor would, in the short interval, have
changed into barytone; Figaro's barytone into a bass, while the
buffo-bass of Don Basilio would have reversed the process with age
and gone upward into the tenor region. We should meet with some
new characters, of which two at least would supply the element of
dramatic freshness and vivacity which we should miss from the
company of the first opera--Susanna and Cherubino.

We should also, in all likelihood, be struck by the difference in
the moral atmosphere of the two works. It took Beaumarchais three
years to secure a public performance of his "Mariage de Figaro"
because of the opposition of the French court, with Louis XVI at
its head, to its too frank libertinism. This opposition spread also
to other royal and imperial personages, who did not relish the
manner in which the poet had castigated the nobility, exalted the
intellectuality of menials, and satirized the social and political
conditions which were generally prevalent a short time before the
French Revolution. Neither of the operas, however, met the obstacles