the advanced school. No
association has done more important work, among musical dramas as well
as musical comedies, during the last twenty years. In this theatre,
which produced _Carmen_ in 1875, _Manon_ in 1884, and the _Roi d'Ys_ in
1888, were played the principal dramas of M. Bruneau, as well as M.
Charpentier's _Louise_, M. Debussy's _Pelleas et Melisande_, and M.
Dukas's _Ariane et Barbebleue_. It may seem astonishing that such works
should have found a place at the Opera-Comique and not at the Opera. But
if two musical theatres of different kinds exist, one of which pretends
to have the monopoly of great art, while the other with a simpler and
more intimate character seeks only to please, it is always the latter
that has a better chance of development and of making new discoveries;
for the first is oppressed by traditions that become ever stiffer and
more pedantic, while the other with its simplicity and lack of
pretension is able to accommodate itself to any manner of life. How many
artists have revolutionised their times while they were merely looked
upon as people who amused! Frescobaldi and Philipp Emanuel Bach brought
fresh life to art, but were scorned by the so-called representatives of
fine art; Mozart's _opere buffe_ have more of truth and life in them
than his _opere serie_; and there is as much dramatic power in an
_opera-comique_ like _Carmen_ as in all the repertory of grand Opera
to-day. And so the Opera-Comique theatre has become the home of the
boldest experiments in musical drama. The most daring or the most
violent ventures into musical realism, after the manner of Charpentier
or Bruneau, and the subtle fantasies of a delicate art of dreams, like
that of Debussy, have found a welcome there. It has also been open to
various kinds of foreign art: Humperdinck's _Haensel und Gretel_, Verdi's
_Falstaff_, the works of Puccini, Mascagni, and the young Italian
school, Richard Strauss's _Feuersnot_, Rimsky-Korsakow's
_Snegourotchka_, have all been played. And they have even given the
classic masterpieces of opera there: _Fidelio_, _Orfeo_, _Alceste_, the
two _Iphigenies_; and taken more pains with them and mounted them with
more pious zeal than they do at the Opera. The operas themselves are
more at home there, too, for the size of the theatre is more like that
of the eighteenth-century theatres. It is true that the stage rather
lacks depth; but the ingenuity of the director and the admirable scenic
artis