heir of Avenel, promises to help him in recovering his property.  She has discovered that treasure is concealed in a statue of the White Lady, and with this she empowers George to buy back his ancestral lands and castle.  Gaveston is outbidden at the sale, and George weds Anna.  Boieldieu’s music has much melodic beauty, though its tenderness is apt to degenerate into sentimentality.  In its original form the opera would nowadays be unbearably tiresome, and only a judicious shortening of the interminable duets and trios can make them tolerable to a modern audience.  In spite of much that is conventional and old-fashioned, the alternate vigour and grace of ‘La Dame Blanche’ and the genuine musical interest of the score make it the most favourable specimen of this period of French opera comique.  It is the last offspring of the older school.  After Boieldieu’s time the influence of Rossini became paramount, and opera comique, unable to resist a spell so formidable, began to lose its distinctively national characteristics.

CHAPTER VI

WEBER AND THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL

WEBER—&
shy;SPOHR—­MARSCHNER—­KREUTZER—­LORTZING—­ NICOLAI—­FLOTOW—­MENDELSSOHN—­SCHUBERT—­SCHUMANN

Although, for the sake of convenience, it is customary to speak of Weber as the founder of the romantic school in music, it must not be imagined that the new school sprang into being at the production of ’Der Freischuetz.’  For many years the subtle influence of the romantic school in literature—­the circle which gathered round Tieck, Fichte, and the Schlegels—­had been felt in music.  We have seen how the voluptuous delights of Armida’s garden affected even the stately muse of Gluck; and in the generation which succeeded him, though opera still followed classic lines of form, in subject and treatment it was tinged with the prismatic colours of romance.  Mehul’s curious experiments in orchestration, and the solemn splendour of Mozart’s Egyptian mysteries, alike show the influence of the romantic spirit as surely as the weirdest piece of diablerie ever devised by Weber or his followers.  Yet though intimations of the approaching change had for long been perceptible to the discerning eye, it was not until the days of Weber that the classical forms and methods which had ruled the world of opera since the days of Gluck gave way before the newer and more vivid passion of romance.  Even then it must not be forgotten that the romantic school differed from the classic more in view of life and treatment of subject than in actual subject itself.  The word romance conjures up weird visions of the supernatural or glowing pictures of chivalry; but although it is true that Weber and his followers loved best to treat of such themes as these, they had by no means been excluded from the repertory of their classical predecessors.  The supernatural terrors of ‘Der Freischuetz’