The poem which Chorley quotes from was inspired by the performance of the great Pasta in Simone Mayer’s weak musical setting of the fable of the Colchian sorceress, which crowded the opera-houses of Europe.  The life of the French classical tragedy, too, was powerfully assisted by Rachel.  Though the poem on which Cherubini worked was unworthy of his genius, it could not be from this or from lack of interest in the theme alone that this great work is so rarely performed; it is because there have been not more than three or four actresses in the last hundred years combining the great tragic and vocal requirements exacted by the part.  If the tragic genius of Pasta conld have been united with the voice of a Catalani, made as it were of adamant and gold, Cherubini’s sublime musical creation would have found an adequate interpreter.  Mdlle.  Tietjens, indeed, has been the only late dramatic singer who dared essay so difficult a task.  Musical students rank the instrumental parts of this opera with the organ music of Bach, the choral fugues of Handel, and the symphonies of Beethoven, for beauty of form and originality of ideas.

On its first representation, on the 13th of March, 1797, one of the journals, after praising its beauty, professed to discover imitations of Mehul’s manner in it.  The latter composer, in an indignant rejoinder, proclaimed himself and all others as overshadowed by Cherubini’s genius:  a singular example of artistic humility and justice.  Three years after its performance in Paris, it was given at Berlin and Vienna, and stamped by the Germans as one of the world’s great musical masterpieces.  This work was a favorite one with Schubert, Beethoven, and Weber, and there have been few great composers who have not put on record their admiration of it.

As great, however, as “Medee” is ranked, “Les Deux Journees,"* produced in 1800, is the opera on which Cherubim’s fame as a dramatic composer chiefly rests.

     * In German known as “Die Wassertrager,” in English “The
     Water-Carriers.”

Three hundred consecutive performances did not satisfy Paris; and at Berlin and Frankfort, as well as in Italy, it was hailed with acclamation.  Bouilly was the author of the opera-story, suggested by the generous action of a water-carrier toward a magistrate who was related to the author.  The story is so interesting, so admirably written, that Goethe and Mendelssohn considered it the true model for a comic opera.  The musical composition, too, is nearly faultless in form and replete with beauties.  In this opera Cherubini anticipated the reforms of Wagner, for he dispensed with the old system which made the drama a web of beautiful melodies, and established his musical effects for the most part by the vigor and charm of the choruses and concerted pieces.  It has been accepted as a model work by composers, and Beethoven was in the habit of keeping it by him on his writing-table for constant study and reference.