relative
superiority over other concerts in Paris in the performance of choral
works, which up to the present have been very second-rate. But these
concerts are not easy of access for the general public, as the number of
seats for sale is very limited. And so the society is representative of
a little public whose taste is, broadly speaking, conservative and
official; and the noise of the strife outside its doors only reaches its
ears slowly, and with a deadened sound.

The influence of the Conservatoire is, in music especially, an influence
of the past and of the Government. One may say much the same of the
Opera. This ancient association, which bears the imposing name of
_Academie nationale de Musique_ and dates from 1669, is a sort of
national institution which is more concerned with the history of
official art than with living art. The satire with which Jean-Jacques
describes, in his _Nouvelle Heloise_, the stiff solemnity and mournful
pomp of its performances has not lost much of its truth. What is lacking
in the Opera to-day is the enthusiasm that accompanied its former
musical struggles in the times of the "_Encyclopedistes_" and the
"_guerre des coins_." The great battles of art are now fought outside
its doors; and it has become by degrees a showy _salon_, a little faded
perhaps, where the public is more interested in itself than in the
performance. In spite of the enormous sums that it swallows up every
year (nearly four million francs),[213] only one or two new pieces are
produced in a year, and they are rarely works that are representative of
the modern school. And though it has at last admitted Wagner's dramas
into its repertory, one can no longer consider these works, half a
century old, to be in the vanguard of music. The most esteemed masters
of the French school, such as Massenet, Reyer, Chausson, and Vincent
d'Indy, had to seek refuge in the Theatre de la Monnaie at Brussels
before they could get their works received at the Opera in Paris. And
the classical composers fare no better. Neither _Fidelio_ nor Gluck's
tragedies--with the exception of _Armide_, which was put on under
pressure of fashion--are represented; and when by chance they give
_Freischuetz_ or _Don Juan_, one wonders if it would not have been better
to let them rest in oblivion, rather than treat them sacrilegiously by
adding, cutting, introducing ballets and new recitatives, and deforming
their style so as to bring them "up to date."[21