Italy. Time was when Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen went to Italy
to study operatic composition and wrote in the Italian manner to
Italian texts. All this had changed at the period of which I am
writing--Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen had operas in their own
languages and schools of composition of their own. But still New York
and London clung to Italian sweets.

And Italy had become sterile. Verdi seemed to have ceased writing. There
were whisperings of an "Iago" written in collaboration with Boito, but
it was awaiting ultimate criticism and final polish while the wonderful
old master was engaged in revamping some of his early works. Boito was
writing essays and librettos for others, with the unfinished "Nerone"
lying in his desk, where it is still hidden. Ponchielli had not
succeeded in getting a hearing for anything since "La Gioconda."
Expectations had been raised touching an opera entitled "Dejanice," by
Catalani, but I cannot recall that it ever crossed the Italian border.
The hot-blooded young veritists who were soon to flood Italy with their
creations had not yet been heard of. The champions of a change from
Italian to German ideals seemed to have the argument all in their favor.
The spectacle presented by the lyric stage in Germany and France seemed
to show indubitably what course opera as an art form must needs take if
it was to live. Gluck, Weber, and Wagner, all Germans, had pointed the
way. In 1883 five new operas by English composers reached the dignity of
performance, and it was significant that two of them--Mr. Mackenzie's
"Colomba" and Mr. Stanford's "Savonarola"--were performed in German, the
former in Hamburg, the latter in London. There were many lovers of opera
in New York besides the musical reviewer for The Tribune who believed
that if America was ever to have a musical art of its own the way could
best be paved by supplanting Italian performances by German at the
principal home of opera in the United States. We should, it is true,