it will be for Mascagni’s reputation.  ‘Guglielmo Ratcliff’ and ‘Silvano,’ both produced in 1895, have not been heard out of Italy, nor is there much probability that they will ever cross the Alps.  ‘Zanetto’ (1896), on the other hand, seems to contain the best work which Mascagni has yet given to the world.  It is founded upon Francois Coppee’s charming duologue, ‘Le Passant,’ a graceful scene between a world-weary courtesan and a youthful troubadour who passes beneath her balcony.  Mascagni’s music, which is scored only for strings and harp, is both delicate and refined, and instinct with a tender melancholy, for which it would be vain to look in his earlier works.  ‘Iris’ (1898), an opera on a rather unpleasant Japanese story, has met with a certain degree of favour, but ‘Le Maschere’ (1901), an attempt to introduce Harlequin and Columbine to the lyric stage, failed completely, nor does ‘Amica’ (1905) seen to have done much to rehabilitate the composer’s waning reputation.  Mascagni has as yet done little to justify the extravagant eulogies with which his first work was greeted, and his warmest admirers are beginning to fear that the possibility of his doing something to redeem the early promise of ‘Cavalleria’ is getting rather remote.

Leoncavallo, though older than Mascagni, must be regarded as in a certain sense his follower, since his most popular work, ‘Pagliacci,’ was undoubtedly inspired by ‘Cavalleria Rusticana.’  The story begins with the arrival of a troupe of travelling comedians, or Pagliacci, in an Italian village.  All is not harmony in the little company.  Tonio (the Taddeo, or clown) loves Nedda (Columbine), the wife of Canio (Pagliaccio), but she already has a lover in the shape of Silvio, a young villager, and rejects the clumsy advances of the other with scorn.  Tonio overhears the mutual vows of Nedda and her lover, and bent upon vengeance, hurries off to bring the unsuspecting Canio upon the scene.  He only arrives in time to see the disappearance of Silvio, and cannot terrify his wife into disclosing her lover’s name, though he is only just prevented by Beppe, the Harlequin of the troupe, from stabbing her on the spot.  The second act is on the evening of the same day, a few hours later.  The curtain of the rustic theatre goes up and the little play begins.  By a curious coincidence the scheme of the plot represents something like the real situation of the actors.  Columbine is entertaining her lover Harlequin in the absence of her husband Pagliaccio, while Taddeo keeps a look-out for his return.  When he returns we see that the mimic comedy is to develop into real tragedy.  Canio scarcely makes a pretence of keeping to his role of Pagliaccio.  Mad with jealousy, he rushes on his wife and tries to make her confess the name of her lover.  She refuses, and in the end he stabs her, while Silvio, who has formed one of the rustic audience, leaps on to the stage only to receive his death-blow as well.  As in ‘Cavalleria,’