as he seems, and, suspecting something underhand, he persuades the mad Dinorah to go down into the ravine in his place.  Dinorah consents, but while she is crossing a rustic bridge, preparatory to the descent, it is struck by lightning, and she tumbles into the abyss.  She is saved by Hoel in some inexplicable way, and, still more inexplicably, regains her reason.  The music is bright and tuneful, and the reaper’s and hunter’s songs (which are introduced for no apparent reason) are delightful; but the libretto is so impossibly foolish that the opera has fallen into disrepute, although the brilliant music of the heroine should make it a favourite role with competent singers.

Meyerbeer was extravagantly praised during his lifetime; he is now as bitterly decried.  The truth seems to lie, as usual, between the two extremes.  He was an unusually clever man, with a strong instinct for the theatre.  He took immense pains with his operas, often rewriting the entire score; but his efforts were directed less towards ideal perfection than to what would be most effective, so that there is a hollowness and a superficiality about his best work which we cannot ignore, even while we admit the ingenuity of the means employed.  His influence upon modern opera has been extensive.  He was the real founder of the school of melodramatic opera which is now so popular.  Violent contrasts with him do duty for the subtle characterisation of the older masters.  His heroes rant and storm, and his heroines shriek and rave, but of real feeling, and even of real expression, there is little in his scores.

The career of Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was in striking contrast to that Meyerbeer.  While Meyerbeer was earning the plaudits of crowded theatres throughout the length and breadth of Europe, Berlioz sat alone, brooding over the vast conceptions to which it taxed even his gigantic genius to give musical shape.  Even now the balance has scarcely been restored.  Though Meyerbeer’s popularity is on the wane, the operas of Berlioz are still known for the most part only to students.  Before the Berlioz cycle at Carlsruhe in 1893, ‘La Prise de Troie’ had never been performed on any stage, and though the French master’s symphonic works now enjoy considerable popularity, his dramatic works are still looked at askance by managers.  There is a reason for this other than the hardness of our hearts.  Berlioz was essentially a symphonic writer.  He had little patience with the conventions of the stage, and his attempts to blend the dramatic and symphonic elements, as in ‘Les Troyens,’ can scarcely be termed a success.  Yet much may be pardoned for the sake of the noble music which lies enshrined in his works.  ‘Benvenuto Cellini’ and ‘Beatrice et Benedict,’ which were thought too advanced for the taste of their day, are now perhaps a trifle old-fashioned for our times.  The first is a picturesque story of Rome in Carnival time.  The interest centres in the casting of