Cherubino, watched from different places of concealment by the Count, Figaro, and Susanna, appears, and, seeing the Countess, whom he takes for Susanna, confounds not her alone, but also the Count and Figaro, by his ardent addresses to her.  He attempts to kiss her, but the Count steps forward and interposes his cheek.  The Count attempts to box Cherubino’s ears, but Figaro, slipping forward at the moment, receives the blow instead.  Confusion is at its height.  The Count makes love to his wife, thinking she is Susanna, promises her a dowry, and places a ring on her finger.  Seeing torches approaching, they withdraw into deeper darkness.  Susanna shows herself, and Figaro, who takes her for the Countess, acquaints her of the Count’s doings which he has just witnessed.  Susanna betrays herself, and Figaro resolves to punish her for her masquerading.  He makes love to her with extravagant pathos until interrupted by a slap in the face.  Susanna’s patience had become exhausted, and her temper got the better of her judgment.  Figaro laughs at her ill-humor and confesses his trick, but renews his sham love-making when he sees the Count returning.  The latter calls for lights, and seizes Figaro and his retainers.  In the presence of all he is put to shame by the disclosures of the personality of the Countess and Susanna.  He falls on his knees, asks forgiveness, receives it, and all ends happily.

CHAPTER III

“Die Zauberflote”

Mozart’s “Zauberflote”—­“The Magic Flute”—­is the oldest German opera holding a place on the American stage, though not quite 118 years old; but so far as my memory and records go, it has had but four performances in the original tongue in New York in a whole generation.  There have been a few representations in English within this time and a considerable number in Italian, our operatic institutions being quick, as a rule, to put it upon the stage whenever they have at command a soprano leggiero with a voice of sufficient range and flexibility to meet the demands of the extraordinary music which Mozart wrote for the Queen of Night to oblige his voluble-throated sister-in-law, Mme. Hofer, who was the original representative of that character.  The same operatic conditions having prevailed in New York and London for many years, it is not strange that English-speaking people have come to associate “The Magic Flute” with the Italian rather than the German repertory.  Yet we have the dictum of Beethoven that it is Mozart’s greatest opera, because in it his genius showed itself in so large a variety of musical forms, ranging from ditties in the folk-song style to figurated chorale and fugue, and more particularly because in it Mozart first disclosed himself as a German composer.  By this Beethoven did not mean that Mozart had not written music before for a German libretto, but that he had never written German music before in an opera.