of ephemeral operettas.  It is constructed on a conventional model, and its thematic material is drawn from the music of the opera; but, like the prelude to Wagner’s lyric comedy, “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg,” it presents the contents of the play in the form of what many years after its composition came to be called a symphonic poem, and illustrates the ideal which was in Gluck’s mind when, in the preface to “Alceste,” he said, “I imagined that the overture ought to prepare the audience for the action of the piece, and serve as a kind of argument to it.”  The atmosphere of the opera is that which pervades the sylvan life of Germany—­its actualities and its mysteries, the two elements having equal potency.  Into the peacefulness of the woods the French horns ("Forest horns,” the Germans call them) usher us at once with the hymn which they sing after a few introductory measures.

[Musical excerpt]

But no sooner do we yield to the caress of this mood than there enters the supernatural element which invests the tragical portion of the story.  Ominous drum beats under a dissonant tremolo of the strings and deep tones of the clarinets, a plangent declamatory phrase of the violoncellos:—­

[Musical excerpt]

tell us of the emotions of the hero when he feels himself deserted by Heaven; the agitated principal subject of the main body of the overture (Molto vivace):—­

[Musical excerpt]

proclaims his terror at the thought that he has fallen into the power of the Evil One, while the jubilant second theme:—­

[Musical excerpt]

gives voice to the happiness of the heroine and the triumph of love and virtue which is the outcome of the drama.

The first glimpse of the opera reveals an open space in a forest and in it an inn and a target-shooting range.  Max, a young assistant to the Chief Forester of a Bohemian principality, is seated at a table with a mug of beer before him, his face and attitude the picture of despondency.  Hard by, huntsmen and others are grouped around Kilian, a young peasant who fires the last shot in a contest of marksmanship as the scene is disclosed.  He hits off the last remaining star on the target, and is noisily acclaimed as Schutzenkonig (King of the Marksmen), and celebrated in a lusty song by the spectators, who decorate the victor, and forming a procession bearing the trophies of the match, march around the glade.  As they pass Max they point their fingers and jeer at him.  Kilian joins in the sport until Max’s fuming ill-humor can brook the humiliation no longer; he leaps up, seizes the lapel of Kilian’s coat, and draws his hunting-knife.  A deadly quarrel seems imminent, but is averted by the coming of Cuno, Chief Forester, and Caspar, who, like Max, is one of his assistants.  To the reproaches of Cuno, who sees the mob surging around Max, Kilian explains that there was no ill-will in the mockery of him, the crowd only following an