sm, the author of
_Pelleas et Melisande_ is now writing a _Tristan_, whose plot is taken
from an old French poem, the text of which has been recently brought to
light by M. Bedier. In its calm and lofty strain it is a wonderful
contrast to Wagner's savage and pedantic, though sublime poem.

But it is especially by the manner in which they conceive the respective
relationships of poetry and music to opera that the two composers
differ. With Wagner, music is the kernel of the opera, the glowing
focus, the centre of attraction; it absorbs everything, and it stands
absolutely first. But that is not the French conception. The musical
stage, as we conceive it in France (if not what we actually possess),
should present such a combination of the arts as go to make an
harmonious whole. We demand that an equal balance shall be kept between
poetry and music; and if their equilibrium must be a little upset, we
should prefer that poetry was not the loser, as its utterance is more
conscious and rational. That was Gluck's aim; and because he realised it
so well he gained a reputation among the French public which nothing
will destroy. Debussy's strength lies in the methods by which he has
approached this ideal of musical temperateness and disinterestedness,
and in the way he has placed his genius as a composer at the service of
the drama. He has never sought to dominate Maeterlinck's poem, or to
swallow it up in a torrent of music; he has made it so much a part of
himself that at the present time no Frenchman is able to think of a
passage in the play without Debussy's music singing at the same time
within him.

But apart from all these reasons that make the work important in the
history of opera, there are purely musical reasons for its success,
which are of deeper significance still.[200] _Pelleas et Melisande_ has
brought about a reform in the dramatic music of France. This reform is
concerned with several things, and, first of all, with recitative.

[Footnote 200: That is for musicians. But I am convinced that with the
mass of the public the other reasons have more weight--as is always the
case.]

In France we have never had--apart from a few attempts in
_opera-comique_--a recitative that exactly expressed our natural speech.
Lully and Rameau took for their model the high-flown declamation of the
tragedy stage of their time. And French opera for the past twenty years
has chosen a more dangerous model still--the declamation of W