in the old medium.
The first of these lines has not been broken to this day: Rossini
came, and, after Rossini, Donizetti, Auber, Bellini, Meyerbeer, and
the rest; and ear-tickler follows ear-tickler unto this day. The
second line in its turn quickly split into those who, not content with
the form, sought to alter it, and those who, quite content with it,
went gaily on, turning out opera after opera, dealing with modern
subjects in the old-fashioned way. Of these last Gounod must be
reckoned the chief; and he began, not where Mozart left off, but with
the Mozartean method of the "Don Giovanni" period. Now, it is of the
very essence of the Italian opera of the Gluck-cum-Mozart model that
it enables a composer to represent moments. The drama does not unfold
gradually, as it does in the music-play, with its continuous flow of
music marking the subtlest changes. It unfolds in jerks, each number
advancing it a stage; so that Gluck never got any appearance of
continuity whatever, while Mozart got it only by the consummate tact
with which he arranged his pictures, and by the exciting pace at which
he passes them before us. The figures seem to move, as in the
Kinetoscope, or its forerunner the Wheel of Life: the Mozartean opera,
when most dramatic, is a musical Wheel of Life. Gounod possessed
neither Mozart's tact nor his fiery energy. Neither was called for in
"Faust," which is not a drama, but a series of scenes, of crucial
moments, from a drama; and since the moments were moments charged with
the one feeling which Gounod appears to have felt very strongly or to
have had the faculty for expressing, he is here at his very best.
There was nothing spiritual in love as Gounod knew it--it was purely
animal, though delicately animal; and Marguerite remains, and will
remain, as the final expression of the most refined and voluptuous
form of sensuality. What he had done in "Faust" he attempted to do
again, with sundry differences, in "Romeo and Juliet"; and here the
method which had served him so faithfully and so well in "Faust"
utterly broke down. In "Faust" there were virtually but two
characters, Faust and Marguerite, while in "Romeo" the stage was
encumbered with Tybalt, Capulet, Mercutio, Laurent; and what would
have been Mozart's opportunity was his undoing. He could give none of
them pungent or characteristic language; they are the merest Italian
operatic puppets; and it is only when they are off the stage that the
opera show