to see my Marguerite next season.”  Now, Gounod’s Marguerite does not quite belong to the heroic roles, though we can all remember how Lucca thrilled us by her intensity of action as well as of song, and how Madame Nilsson sent the blood out of our cheeks, though she did stride through the opera like a combination of the grande dame and Ary Scheffer’s spirituelle pictures; but such as it is, Madame Gerster achieved a success of interest only, and that because of her strivings for originality.  Sembrich and Gerster, when they were first heard in New York, had as much execution as Melba or Nilsson; but their voices had less emotional power than that of the latter, and less beauty than that of the former—­beauty of the kind that might be called classic, since it is in no way dependent on feeling.

[Sidenote:  Melba and Eames.]

[Sidenote:  Calve.]

[Sidenote:  Dramatic singers.]

[Sidenote:  Jean de Reszke.]

[Sidenote:  Edouard de Reszke and Plancon.]

Patti, Lucca, Nilsson, and Gerster sang in the operas in which Melba and Eames sing to-day, and though the standard of judgment has been changed in the last twenty-five years by the growth of German ideals, I can find no growth of potency in the performances of the representative women of Italian and French opera, except in the case of Madame Calve.  For the development of dramatic ideals we must look to the singers of German affiliations or antecedents, Mesdames Materna, Lehmann, Sucher, and Nordica.  As for the men of yesterday and to-day, no lover, I am sure, of the real lyric drama would give the declamatory warmth and gracefulness of pose and action which mark the performances of M. Jean de Reszke for a hundred of the high notes of Mario (for one of which, we are told, he was wont to reserve his powers all evening), were they never so lovely.  Neither does the fine, resonant, equable voice of Edouard de Reszke or the finished style of Plancon leave us with curious longings touching the voices and manners of Lablache and Formes.  Other times, other manners, in music as in everything else.  The great singers of to-day are those who appeal to the taste of to-day, and that taste differs, as the clothes which we wear differ, from the style in vogue in the days of our ancestors.

[Sidenote:  Wagner’s operas.]

[Sidenote:  Wagner’s lyric dramas.]

[Sidenote:  His theories.]

[Sidenote:  The mission of music.]

[Sidenote:  Distinctions abolished.]

[Sidenote:  The typical phrases.]

[Sidenote:  Characteristics of some motives.]