taste for florid
singing impossible for ordinary or untrained voices. Women did not
appear upon the stage in opera until toward the middle of this
century. Haendel, in London, had male sopranos such as Farinelli,
Senesimo, and the earlier of the female sopranos, of whom the vicious
Cuzzoni was a shining example. The artistic merits of Porpora have
been greatly exaggerated by certain writers, notably by Mme. George
Sand in her "_Consuelo_," where he figures as one of the greatest and
most devoted of artists. Her work, however, has the excellence of
affording a very good representation of the artistic end proposed by
the Italian masters of singing in their best moments. Porpora spent
the early part of his life in Naples, but afterward he resided for
some time in Dresden, Vienna, Rome and Venice, being principal of a
conservatory in the latter place. In the latter years of his life
(1736) he was invited to London to compose operas in competition with
Haendel, in which calling he but poorly succeeded. Porpora represents
the ideal which has ruled Italian opera from his time to the present,
the ideal, namely, of the pleasing, the well sounding, and the vocally
agreeable. He is responsible for the fanciful roulades, the long arias
and the many features of this part of dramatic music which please the
unthinking, but mark such a wide departure from the severe and noble,
if narrow, ideal of the original inventors of this form of art.

It is to be regretted that the limits of the present work do not
permit the introduction of selections of music sufficiently extended
for illustrating the finer modifications of style effected by the
successive masters named in the text. The brief extracts following are
taken from the excellent lectures of the late John Hullah upon
"Transitional Periods in Musical History." The same valuable and
suggestive work contains a number of more extended selections from
these and other little known masters of the period, for which reason
the book forms a useful addition to the library of teachers, schools,
etc. Other illustrations will be found in Gevaert's "_Les Gloires
d'Italie_" ("The Glories of Italy"). There are sixty arias in this
collection, all well edited, and chosen for their effectiveness for
public performance at the present day.

[Music illustration: ARIA PARLANTE.--"LASCIATE MI MORIR."

(From the opera "Ariadne," 1607. Monteverde.)

La-scia-te mi mo-ri-re,
La-scia-te mi mo-ri-re