s any signs of life. In the story of "Romeo" the passion is
of a far more fiery quality than in that of "Faust"; and whereas in
"Faust" the passion, once aroused, remains at an even level until the
finale, where it becomes a little more intense, in "Romeo" it is
passion which gradually amounts to a tremendous climax in the Balcony
scene, and in the Bedroom scene is strangely blended with chilly
forebodings of death. The Mozartean method did not permit Gounod to
depict these metamorphoses and blendings of feeling. Mozart himself
would have been hard pressed to do it; and, for want of the only
method that might have enabled Gounod to do it,--the Wagnerian method
of continuous development of typical themes,--the unfolding of the
drama hangs fire in every scene, not a scene ends at a higher pitch of
feeling than it began. The last scene of all, the scene where a more
sincere composer would have made his most stupendous effect, demanded
at least sympathy with emotions for which Gounod at no time showed the
slightest sympathy. He could give us the erotic fervour with which
Romeo looks death in the eyes, but the mood preceding and indeed
leading up to that fervour he could not give us--the mood which finds
the world barren, ugly, and so repellent that death itself appears
beautiful by comparison, the mood to which Christianity makes its
strongest appeal. But it was not the subject which led to Gounod's
failure in "Romeo and Juliet." He failed in every opera excepting
"Faust," and he failed because, lacking perfect sincerity and perfect
knowledge of his own powers, he endeavoured to express feelings he had
never experienced, in a form which he would have felt at once to be
inadequate had he experienced them for ever so brief a moment. As
Gounod failed in "Romeo," and failed in every other opera, so every
modern composer who tries to treat dramatic subjects in the old
undramatic form has failed, and will fail. The Italian opera was well
enough for the purpose it was devised to serve; but as soon as
composers seek to put strenuous action, elaborately worked-out
situations, and the gradual growth and change of human passion into
it, we feel that there must be a lack of artistic sincerity somewhere.
Italian opera may offer all these things, the things that the age
wants in its opera, but it can never be sincere in offering them, and
art is the one place where insincerity is intolerable.

But those who have heard "Romeo and Juliet"