little comedy, Herr Humperdinck suggested its expansion into a piece of theatrical dimensions; and the opera was the result.  It was brought forward for the first time in public on December 23, 1893, in Weimar, and created so profound an impression that it speedily took possession of all the principal theatres of Germany, crossed the channel into England, made its way into Holland, Belgium, and Italy, and reached America within two years.  Its first performance in New York was in an English version at Daly’s Theatre on October 8, 1895.  There were drawbacks in the representation which prevented a success, but after it had been incorporated in the German repertory of the Metropolitan Opera-house in the season of 1895-1896 it became as much of a permanency as any opera in the list.

Humperdinck has built up the musical structure of “Hansel und Gretel” in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms.  The little work is replete with melodies which, though original, bear a strong family resemblance to two little songs which the children sing at the beginning of the first and second acts, and which are veritable nursery songs in Germany.  These ditties and the principal melodies consorted with them contribute characteristic motifs out of which the orchestral part is constructed; and these motifs are developed in accordance with an interrelated scheme every bit as logical and consistent as the scheme at the bottom of “Tristan und Isolde.”  As in that stupendous musical tragedy, the orchestra takes the part played by the chorus in Greek tragedy, so in “Hansel und Gretel” it unfolds the thoughts, motives, and purposes of the personages of the play and lays bare the simple mysteries of the plot and counterplot.  The careless happiness of the children, the apprehension of the parents, promise and fulfilment, enchantment and disenchantment—­all these things are expounded by the orchestra in a fine flood of music, highly ingenious in contrapuntal texture, rich in instrumental color, full of rhythmical life, on the surface of which the idyllic play floats buoyantly, like a water-lily which

              starts and slides
  Upon the level in little puffs of wind,
  Tho’ anchored to the bottom.

It is necessary, because the music is so beautiful and also because the piece, like the “Leonore” overtures of Beethoven and the “Meistersinger” prelude of Wagner (of which, indeed, it is a pretty frank imitation) is a sort of epitome of the play, to spend some time with the prelude to “Hansel und Gretel.”  After I have done this I shall say what I have to say about the typical phrases of the score as they are reached, and shall leave to the reader the agreeable labor of discovering the logical scheme underlying their introduction and development.