“Harmony reigns supreme, instead of being the foundation from which the melodic groups of the musical picture stand forth.  These discordant combinations, far from moving the listener, arouse in him a feeling analogous to that which he would experience on seeing a rope-dancer hanging to a thread and swaying between life and death.  Never does a soothing strain come in to mitigate the fatiguing suspense.  It really is as though the composer had had no other object in view than to produce a baroque effect without troubling himself about musical truth or unity, or about the capabilities of human voices which are swamped by this flood of instrumental noise.”

“Silence, my friend!” cried Gambara.  “I am still under the spell of that glorious chorus of hell, made still more terrible by the long trumpets,—­a new method of instrumentation.  The broken cadenzas which give such force to Robert’s scene, the cavatina in the fourth act, the finale of the first, all hold me in the grip of a supernatural power.  No, not even Gluck’s declamation ever produced so prodigious an effect, and I am amazed by such skill and learning.”

“Signor Maestro,” said Andrea, smiling, “allow me to contradict you.  Gluck, before he wrote, reflected long; he calculated the chances, and he decided on a plan which might be subsequently modified by his inspirations as to detail, but hindered him from ever losing his way.  Hence his power of emphasis, his declamatory style thrilling with life and truth.  I quite agree with you that Meyerbeer’s learning is transcendent; but science is a defect when it evicts inspiration, and it seems to me that we have in this opera the painful toil of a refined craftsman who in his music has but picked up thousands of phrases out of other operas, damned or forgotten, and appropriated them, while extending, modifying, or condensing them.  But he has fallen into the error of all selectors of centos,—­an abuse of good things.  This clever harvester of notes is lavish of discords, which, when too often introduced, fatigue the ear till those great effects pall upon it which a composer should husband with care to make the more effective use of them when the situation requires it.  These enharmonic passages recur to satiety, and the abuse of the plagal cadence deprives it of its religious solemnity.

“I know, of course, that every musician has certain forms to which he drifts back in spite of himself; he should watch himself so as to avoid that blunder.  A picture in which there were no colors but blue and red would be untrue to nature, and fatigue the eye.  And thus the constantly recurring rhythm in the score of Robert le Diable makes the work, as a whole, appear monotonous.  As to the effect of the long trumpets, of which you speak, it has long been known in Germany; and what Meyerbeer offers us as a novelty was constantly used by Mozart, who gives just such a chorus to the devils in Don Giovanni.”