The career of Cesar Franck (1822-1890), offers a striking contrast to that of his famous contemporary Gounod.  Fame came betimes to Gounod.  While he was still a young man his reputation was European.  He wrote his masterpiece at forty, and lived on its success for the remaining thirty years of his life.  Since his death his fame has sadly shrunk, and even ‘Faust’ is beginning to ‘date’ unmistakably.  The name of Cesar Franck, on the other hand, until his death was hardly known beyond a narrow circle of pupils, but during the last fifteen years his reputation has advanced by leaps and bounds.  At the present moment there is hardly a musician in Paris who would not call him the greatest French composer—­he was a Belgian by birth, but what of that?—­of the nineteenth century.  His fame was won in the concert-room rather than in the theatre, but the day may yet come when his ‘Hulda’ will be a familiar work to opera-goers.  It was produced in 1894 at Monte Carlo, but, in spite of the deep impression which it created, has not yet been heard in Paris.  The action passes in Norway in the times of the Vikings.  Hulda is carried off by a band of marauders, whose chief she is compelled to wed.  She loves Eyolf, another Viking, and persuades him to murder her husband.  After a time he proves faithless to her, whereupon she kills him and throws herself into the sea.  This gloomy tale is illustrated by music of extraordinary power and beauty.  Although Franck only avails himself of guiding themes to a limited extent, in mastery of the polyphonic style his work will compare with Wagner’s most elaborate scores.  In fact, the opulence of orchestral resource and the virility of inspiration displayed in ‘Hulda’ strikingly recall the beauties of ‘Tristan und Isolde.’  ‘Ghiselle,’ a work left unfinished by the composer and completed by several of his pupils, was produced in 1896 at Monte Carlo.  Although by no means upon the same level as ‘Hulda,’ ‘Ghiselle’ also contains much fine music, and will doubtless be heard of again.

Leo Delibes (1836-1891) made no pretensions to the dignity and solidity of Cesar Franck’s style.  He shone principally in ballet-music, but ‘Lakme’ (1883), his best-known opera, is a work of much charm and tenderness.  It tells the story of a Hindoo damsel who loves an English officer.  Her father, a priest, discovering the state of her affections, tries to assassinate the Englishman, but Lakme saves his life, and conveys him to a place of concealment in the jungle.  There she find that his heart is set upon a beautiful English ‘miss,’ and, in despair, poisons herself with the flowers of the Datura.  Delibes’s music never rises to passion, but it is unfailingly tender and graceful, and is scored with consummate dexterity.  He has a pretty feeling too for local colour, and the scene in Lakme’s garden is full of a dreamy sensuous charm.  ‘Le Roi l’a dit’ (1873) is a dainty little work upon an old French subject, as graceful and fragile as a piece of Sevres porcelain.