since quit listening to it.  But now my jaded faculties were arrested by a new quality in the prelude.  I had always admired the composer of “Rigoletto,” “Il Trovatore,” and “Traviata,” and I loved and revered the author of “Aida,” “Otello,” and “Falstaff.”  I had toddled along breathlessly in the trail made by his seven-league boots during the last thirty-five years of his career; but as I listened I found myself wondering that I had not noticed before that his modernity had begun before I had commenced to realize even what maternity meant—­more than half a century ago, for “La Traviata” was composed in 1853.  The quivering atmosphere of Violetta’s sick-room seemed almost visible as the pathetic bit of hymnlike music rose upward from the divided viols of the orchestra like a cloud of incense which gathered itself together and floated along with the pathetic song of the solo violin.  The work of palliating the character of the courtesan had begun, and on it went with each recurrence of the sad, sweet phrase as it punctuated the conversation between Violetta and her maid, until memory of her moral grossness was swallowed up in pity for her suffering.  Conventional song-forms returned when poet and composer gave voice to the dying woman’s lament for the happiness that was past and her agony of fear when she felt the touch of Death’s icy hand; but where is melody more truthfully eloquent than in “Addio, del passato,” and “Gran Dio! morir so giovane”?  Is it within the power of instruments, no matter how great their number, or harmony with all the poignancy which it has acquired through the ingenious use of dissonance, or of broken phrase floating on an instrumental flood, to be more dramatically expressive than are these songs?  Yet they are, in a way, uncompromisingly formal, architectural, strophic, and conventionally Verdian in their repetition of rhythmical motives and their melodic formularies.  This introduction to the third act recalls the introduction to the first, which also begins with the hymnlike phrase, and sets the key-note of pathos which is sounded at every dramatic climax, though pages of hurdy-gurdy tune and unmeaning music intervene.  Recall “Ah, fors’ e lui che l’anima,” with its passionate second section, “A quell’ amor,” and that most moving song of resignation, “Dite all’ giovine.”  These things outweigh a thousand times the glittering tinsel of the opera and give “Traviata” a merited place, not only beside the later creations of the composer, but among those latter-day works which we call lyric dramas to distinguish them from those which we still call operas, with commiserating emphasis on the word.