physiognomy of the early operas of the classic revival is still
distinctly traceable in Rossini, Donizetti, and the early Verdi, after
whom its career was suddenly cut short almost in the height of its
fame by the publication of the first part of Wagner's _Oper und
Drama_ in 1851.

From the very beginning the Italian opera was what it is now,
frivolous, insincere, imbecile. Its sole function was, and always has
been, to help idlers of the upper classes to while away their
evenings. The absurd notion of a Platonic music was rivalled by the
absurdity of the composition. The inane dialogue was made up of
interminable recitative, in the midst of which an occasional
chorus--introduced in conformity with supposed classical
practice--must have come as a most refreshing relief; for choruses
they could write. It was dramatic in so far that it was provided with
all the paraphernalia of the stage and that the singers walked about
as they sang. Possibly, too, the performers had some initiation into
modern methods of operatic acting, and would raise one arm at the word
_cielo_, two arms at certain other words, etc.; but it would be
hard to detect any living dramatic idea in those mythological heroes
and heroines, Dafnes, Amors, Tirsis, Ariannas dressed up as stage
shepherds and shepherdesses. The only _raison d'etre_ of the
music in the minds of the fashionable audience was--then as now--to
provide a stimulus for conversation and flirting, or a pleasant
diversion in the intervals of their business transactions.

But it is easy to ridicule the follies and failures of men who were
striving after an ideal. More profitable to us it will be to trace
what substantiality their dream of dramatic revival really possessed,
and if we strip it of the false garment of classicity in which it