to comedy in that language.  Spoken with the vivacity native to it in the drama, dry recitative is an impossibility in English.  It is only in the more measured and sober gait proper to oratorio that we can listen to it in the vernacular without thought of incongruity.  Yet it may be made most admirably to preserve the characteristics of conversation, and even illustrate Spencer’s theory of the origin of music.  Witness the following brief example from “Don Giovanni,” in which the vivacity of the master is admirably contrasted with the lumpishness of his servant: 

[Sidenote:  An example from Mozart.]

[Music illustration:  Sempre sotto voce.

DON GIOVANNI.  LEPORELLO.
Le-po-rel-lo, o-ve sei?  Son qui per
Le-po-rel-lo, where are you?  I’m here and

D.G.  LEP. dis-gra-zi-a! e vo-i?  Son qui.  Chi e more’s the pit-y! and you, Sir?  Here too.  Who’s

D.G.
mor-to, voi, o il vec-chio?  Che do-
been killed, you or the old one?  What a

LEP.
man-da da bes-tia! il vec-chio.  Bra-vo!
ques-tion, you boo-by! the old one.  Bra-vo!]

[Sidenote:  Its characteristics.]

Of course it is left to the intelligence and taste of the singers to bring out the effects in a recitative, but in this specimen it ought to be noted how sluggishly the disgruntled Leporello replies to the brisk question of Don Giovanni, how correct is the rhetorical pause in “you, or the old one?” and the greater sobriety which comes over the manner of the Don as he thinks of the murder just committed, and replies, “the old one.”

[Sidenote:  Recitative of some sort necessary.]

[Sidenote:  The speaking voice in opera.]

I am strongly inclined to the belief that in one form or the other, preferably the accompanied, recitative is a necessary integer in the operatic sum.  That it is possible to accustom one’s self to the change alternately from speech to song we know from the experiences made with German, French, and English operas, but these were not true lyric dramas, but dramas with incidental music.  To be a real lyric drama an opera ought to be musical throughout, the voice being maintained from beginning to end on an exalted plane.  The tendency to drop into the speaking voice for the sake of dramatic effect shown by some tragic singers does not seem to me commendable.  Wagner relates with enthusiasm how Madame Schroeder-Devrient in “Fidelio” was wont to give supreme emphasis to the phrase immediately preceding the trumpet signal in the dungeon scene ("Another step, and you are dead!”) by speaking the last word “with an awful accent of despair.”  He then comments: 

“The indescribable effect of this manifested itself to all like an agonizing plunge from one sphere into another, and its sublimity consisted in this, that with lightning quickness a glimpse was given to us of the nature of both spheres, of which one was the ideal, the other the real.”

[Sidenote:  Wagner and Schroeder-Devrient.]