In this connection let us consider Boris Godounof, for there is a historical drama suited to its music.  I saw Boris Godounof with considerable interest.  I heard pleasant and impressive passages, and others less so.  In one scene I saw an insignificant friar who suddenly becomes the Emperor in the next scene.  One entire act is made up of processions, the ringing of bells, popular songs, and dazzling costumes.  In another scene a nurse tells pretty stories to the children in her charge.  Then there is a love duet, which is neither introduced nor has any relationship to the development of the work; an incomprehensible evening entertainment, and, finally, funeral scenes in which Chaliapine was admirable.  It was not my fault if I did not discover in all that the inner life, the psychology, the introductions, and the explanations which they complain they do not find in Henri VIII.

“To Henry VIII,” it is stated at the beginning of the work, “nothing is sacred, neither friendship, love nor his word—­ill are playthings of his mad whims.  He knows neither law nor justice.”  And when, a little later, smiling, the King hands the holy water to the ambassador he is receiving, the orchestra reveals the working of his mind by repeating the music of the preceding scene.  From beginning to end the work is written in this way.  But dissertations on such details have not been given the public; the themes of felony, cruelty, and duplicity, and of this and that, have not, as is the fashion of the day, been underlined, so that the critics are excusable for not seeing them.

Not a scene, not a word, they say, shows the soul of Henry VIII.  I would like to ask if it is not revealed in the great scene between Henry and Catharine, where he plays with her as a cat with a mouse, where he veils his desire to be rid of her under his religious scruples, and where he heaps on her constantly vile and cruel insinuations, or even in the last scene with its cruel hypocrisies.  It is difficult to see why all his passions and all his feelings are not brought into play here.  The Russian librettos do no more, nor the operas based on mythology.

But to continue.  From the point of view of opera mythology offers one advantage in the use of the miraculous.  But the rest of the mythical element offers, rather, difficulties.  Characters who never existed and in whom no one believes cannot be made interesting in themselves.  They do not sustain, as is sometimes supposed, the music and poetry.  On the contrary, the music and poetry give them such reality as they possess.  We could not endure the interminable utterances of the mournful Wotan, if it were not for the wonderful music that accompanies them.  Orpheus weeping over Eurydice would not move us greatly, if Gluck had not known how to captivate us by his first notes.  If it were not for Mozart’s music, the puppets of the Magic Flute would amount to nothing.

Musicians should, as a matter of fact, be allowed to choose both the subject and motives for their operas according to their temperaments and their feelings.  Much youthful talent is lost to-day because the young composers believe that they must obey set rules instead of obeying their own inspiration.  All great artists, the illustrious Richard more than any other, mocked the critics.