read by the listener or by the action and accessories of the stage, the force of feeling can be conveyed with overwhelming power, and the whole gamut of emotion, from the subtlest hint or foreshadowing to the fury of inevitable passion, is at the command of him who knows how to wield the means by which expression is carried to the hearer’s mind.  And in this fact—­for a fact it is—­lies the completest justification of opera as an art-form.  The old-fashioned criticism of opera as such, based on the indisputable fact that, however excited people may be, they do not in real life express themselves in song, but in unmodulated speech, is not now very often heard.  With the revival in England of the dramatic instinct, the conventions of stage declamation are readily accepted, and if it be conceded that the characters in a drama may be allowed to speak blank verse, it is hardly more than a step further to permit the action to be carried on by means of vocal utterance in music.  Until latterly, however, English people, though taking pleasure in the opera, went to it rather to hear particular singers than to enjoy the work as a whole, or with any consideration for its dramatic significance.  We should not expect a stern and uncompromising nature like Carlyle’s to regard the opera as anything more than a trivial amusement, and that such was his attitude towards it appears from his letters; but it is curious to see that a man of such strongly pronounced dramatic tastes as Edward FitzGerald, though devoted to the opera in his own way, yet took what can only be called a superficial view of its possibilities.

The Englishman who said of the opera, ’At the first act I was enchanted; the second I could just bear; and at the third I ran away’, is a fair illustration of an attitude common in the eighteenth century; and in France things were not much better, even in days when stage magnificence reached a point hardly surpassed in history.  La Bruyere’s ’Je ne sais comment l’opera avec une musique si parfaite, et une depense toute royale, a pu reussir a m’ennuyer’, shows how little he had realised the fatiguing effect of theatrical splendour too persistently displayed.  St. Evremond finds juster cause for his bored state of mind in the triviality of the subject-matter of operas, and his words are worth quoting at some length:  ’La langueur ordinaire ou je tombe aux operas, vient de ce que je n’en ai jamais vu qui ne m’ait paru meprisable dans la disposition du sujet, et dans les vers.  Or, c’est vainement que l’oreille est flattee, et que les yeux sont charmes, si l’esprit ne se trouve pas satisfait; mon ame d’intelligence avec mon esprit plus qu’avec mes sens, forme une resistance aux impressions qu’elle peut recevoir, ou pour le moins elle manque d’y preter un consentement agreable, sans lequel les objets les plus voluptueux meme ne sauraient me donner un grand plaisir.  Une sottise chargee de musique, de danses, de machines, de decorations, est une sottise magnifique; c’est un vilain fonds sous de beaux dehors, ou je penetre avec beaucoup de desagrement.’