To Ernest Reyer success came late.  The beauties of his early works, ‘Erostrate’ (1852) and ‘La Statue’ (1861), were well known to musicians; but not until the production of ‘Sigurd’ in 1884 did he gain the ear of the public.  Sigurd is the same person as Siegfried, and the plot of Reyer’s opera is drawn from the same source as that of ‘Goetterdaemmerung.’  Hilda, the youthful sister of Gunther, the king of the Burgundians, loves the hero Sigurd, and at the instigation of her nurse gives him a magic potion, which brings him to her feet.  Sigurd, Gunther, and Hagen then swear fealty to each other and start for Iceland, where Brunehild lies asleep upon a lofty rock, surrounded by a circle of fire.  There Sigurd, to earn the hand of Hilda, passes through the flames and wins Brunehild for Gunther.  His face is closely hidden by his visor, and Brunehild in all innocence accepts Gunther as her saviour, and gives herself to him.  The secret is afterwards disclosed by Hilda in a fit of jealous rage, whereupon Brunehild releases Sigurd from the enchantment of the potion.  He recognises her as the bride ordained for him by the gods, but before he can taste his new-found happiness he is treacherously slain by Hagen, while by a mysterious sympathy Brunehild dies from the same stroke that has killed her lover.  Although not produced until 1884, ‘Sigurd’ was written long before the first performance of ‘Goetterdaemmerung,’ but in any case no suspicion of plagiarism can attach to Reyer’s choice of Wagner’s subject.  There is very little except the subject common to the two works.  ‘Sigurd’ is a work of no little power and beauty, but it is conceived upon a totally different plan from that followed in Wagner’s later works.  Reyer uses guiding themes, often with admirable effect, but they do not form the foundation of his system.  Vigorous and brilliant as his orchestral writing is, it is generally kept in subservience to the voices, and though in the more declamatory parts of the opera he writes with the utmost freedom, he has a lurking affection for four-bar rhythm, and many of the songs are conveniently detachable from the score.  ‘Sigurd’ is animated throughout by a loftiness of design worthy of the sincerest praise.  Reyer’s melodic inspiration is not always of the highest, but he rarely sinks below a standard of dignified efficiency.  In ‘Salammbo,’ a setting of Flaubert’s famous romance which was produced at Brussels in 1890, he did not repeat the success of ‘Sigurd.’  ‘Salammbo’ is put together in a workmanlike way, but there is little genuine inspiration in the score.  The local colour is not very effectively managed, and altogether the work is lacking in those qualities of brilliancy and picturesqueness which Flaubert’s Carthaginian story seems to demand.