There is a law against duelling in the streets of Madrid, and a certain spendthrift nobleman, Don Caesar de Bazan, has rendered himself liable to death for protecting a poor boy named Lazarillo from arrest.  Don Jose promises the condemned man that he shall be shot instead of hanged, if he will consent to marry a veiled lady an hour before the execution, intending thus to give Maritana a position at court as the widow of a nobleman.  Don Caesar consents to the arrangement, but Lazarillo takes the bullets out of the soldiers’ rifles, so that the execution does not end fatally, and Maritana is not a widow after all.  Don Caesar finds his way to a villa in the outskirts of Madrid, where he not only has the satisfaction of putting a stop to the King’s attentions to Maritana, but performs the same kind office for the Queen, who is being persecuted by Don Jose.  For the latter performance he receives a free pardon, and is made Governor of Valentia.  ‘Lurline,’ an opera constructed upon the Rhenish legend of the Loreley, has perhaps more musical merit than ‘Maritana,’ but the libretto is more than usually indefinite.

Wallace rivalled Balfe in the facility and shallowness of his melody.  Yet with all their weaknesses, his operas contain many tunes which have wound themselves into popular affection, and in the eyes of Bank-Holiday audiences, ‘Maritana’ stands second only to ‘The Bohemian Girl.’

Sir Julius Benedict (1804-1885), though German by birth, may conveniently be classed as an Englishman.  Trained in the school of Weber, he was a musician of a very different calibre from Balfe and Wallace.  His earlier works, ‘The Gipsy’s Warning’ and ’The Brides of Venice,’ are now forgotten, but ‘The Lily of Killarney,’ which was produced in 1862, is still deservedly popular.

It is founded upon Boucicault’s famous drama, ‘The Colleen Bawn.’  Hardress Cregan, a young Irish landowner, has married Eily O’Connor, a beautiful peasant girl of Killarney.  The marriage has been kept secret, and Hardress, finding that an opportunity has arisen of repairing the fallen fortunes of his house by a rich marriage, contemplates repudiating Eily.  Eily refuses to part with her ‘marriage lines,’ whereupon Danny Mann, Hardress’s faithful henchman, attempts to drown her in the lake.  She is saved by Myles na Coppaleen, a humble lover of her own, who shoots Danny Mann.  Eily’s narrow escape has the result of bringing Hardress to his senses.  He renounces his schemes of ambition, and makes public his marriage with Eily.  Benedict’s music touches a higher level than had been reached by English opera before.  He was, of course, directly inspired by Weber, but there runs through the opera a vein of plaintive melancholy which is all his own.  The form in which ‘The Lily of Killarney’ is cast is now somewhat superannuated, but for tenderness of melody and unaffected pathos, it will compare very favourably with many more pretentious works which have succeeded it.  Sir George Macfarren (1813-1887)