pass this, I will undertake to
dance upon my head." "Well, then," said Meyerbeer, "you had better soon
commence practicing, for I have just commenced the fourth act of 'Les
Huguenots.'" Well might he make this boast, for into the fourth act of
his musical setting of the terrible St. Bartholomew tragedy he put the
finest inspirations of his life.

Singular to say, though he himself represented the very opposite pole
of art spirit and method, Mozart was to him the greatest of his
predecessors. Perhaps it was this very fact, however, which was at the
root of his sentiment of admiration for the composer of "Don Giovanni"
and "Le Nozze di Figaro." A story is told to the effect that Meyerbeer
was once dining with some friends, when a discussion arose respecting
Mozart's position in the musical hierarchy. Suddenly one of the guests
suggested that "certain beauties of Mozart's music had become stale with
age. I defy you," he continued, "to listen to 'Don Giovanni' after the
fourth act of the 'Huguenots.'" "So much the worse, then, for the
fourth act of the 'Huguenots,'" said Meyerbeer, furious at the clumsy
compliment paid to his own work at the expense of his idol.

Critics wedded to the strict German school of music never forgave
Meyerbeer for his dereliction from the spirit and influences of his
nation, and the prominence which he gave to melodramatic effects and
spectacular show in his operas. Not without some show of reason, they
cite this fact as proof of poverty of musical invention. Mendelssohn,
who was habitually generous in his judgment, wrote to the poet Immermann
from Paris of "Robert le Diable": "The subject is of the romantic order;
i.e., the devil appears in it (which suffices the Parisians for romance
and imagination). Nevertheless, it is very bad, and, were it not for
two brilliant seduction scenes, there would, not even be effect....
The opera does not please me; it is devoid of sentiment and feeling....
People admire the music, but where there is no warmth and truth, I can
not even form a standard of criticism."

Schlueter, the historian of music, speaks even more bitterly of
Meyerbeer's irreverence and theatric sensationalism: "'Les Huguenots'
and the far weaker production 'Le Prophete' are, we think, all the more
reprehensible (nowadays especially, when too much stress is laid on
the subject of a work, and consequently on the libretto of an opera),
because the Jew has in these pieces ruthlessly dragged be