refuses the sacrifice, and declares that he will rather die with her than allow her to immolate herself on his account.  He rushes wildly into the palace, and Alcestis bids farewell to life in an air of extraordinary pathos and beauty.  The third act opens with the lamentations of the people for their departed queen.  Hercules, released for a moment from his labours, enters and asks for Admetus.  He is horrified at the news of the calamity which has befallen his friend, and announces his resolve of rescuing Alcestis from the clutches of Death.  Meanwhile Alcestis has reached the portals of the underworld, and is about to surrender herself to the powers of Hell.  Admetus, who has not yet given up hope of persuading her to relinquish her purpose, appears, and pleads passionately with her to leave him to his doom.  His prayers are vain, and Alcestis is tearing herself for the last time from his arms, when Hercules rushes in.  After a short struggle he defeats the powers of Death and restores Alcestis to her husband.  The character of Hercules did not appear in the earlier version of the opera, and in fact was not introduced until after Gluck had left Paris, a few days after the production of ‘Alceste.’  Most of the music allotted to him is probably not by Gluck at all, but seems to have been written by Gossec, who was at that time one of the rising musicians in Paris.  The close of the opera is certainly inferior to the earlier parts, but the introduction of Hercules is a great improvement upon the original version of the last act, in which the rescue of Alcestis is effected by Apollo.  The French librettist did not treat the episode cleverly, and indeed all the last scene is terribly prosaic, and lacking in poetical atmosphere.  To see how the appearance of the lusty hero in the halls of woe can heighten the tragic interest by the sheer force of contrast, we must turn to the ‘Alcestis’ of Euripides, where the death of Alcestis and the strange conflict of Hercules with Death is treated with just that touch of mystery and unearthliness which is absent from the libretto which Gluck was called upon to set.  Of the music of ‘Alceste,’ its passion and intensity, it is impossible to speak too highly.  It has pages of miraculous power, in which the deepest tragedy and the most poignant pathos are depicted with unfaltering certainty.  It is strange to think by what simple means Gluck scaled the loftiest heights.  Compared with our modern orchestra the poverty of the resources upon which he depended seems almost ludicrous.  Even in the vocal part of ‘Alceste’ he was so careful to avoid anything like the sensuous beauty of the Italian style, that sometimes he fell into the opposite extreme and wrote merely arid rhetoric.  Yet he held so consistently before him his ideal of dramatic truth, that his music has survived all changes of taste and fashion, and still delights connoisseurs as fully as on the day it was produced.  ‘Paride ed Elena,’ Gluck’s next great work, shows