here is
absolutely nothing in any of the operas given at the Metropolitan that
could not be fitly sung before a Sunday-school audience. Why, then,
taboo the opera and jeopardize its existence, leaving the field to the
frivolous operettas and farces?

The other obstacle alluded to--the love of colorature song--is a thing
that will cure itself with the advance of musical culture. The Germans
and the French have long since turned their backs on the florid
variety of vocalists, and the Italians are now following suit. An
eminent Italian teacher in New York, who has made a specialty of
teaching trills and runs and roulades and other vocal circus tricks,
lately declared that he was tired of this style of singing, and began
to prefer a more simple and dramatic style. The same is true of the
modern Italian composers. It is well known that Boito, Ponchielli, and
Verdi in his latest operas, approximate the German style; and their
admirers will doubtless ere long adapt their taste to this change.
Nevertheless, there are not a few remaining who look upon opera as a
sort of vocal acrobatics. They go once or twice to the Metropolitan,
and feel defrauded of their money if the prima donna fails to come
forward to the prompter's box to run up some breakneck scales, and,
having arrived at the top, descend by means of a chain of trills or
series of somersaults. Their interest in music is _athletic_ (feats of
skill), not _aesthetic_ (artistic expression of emotions). Yet these
people have the impudence to say that German opera is "stupid,"
forgetting that their case might be analogous to that of the drunkard
who thinks the earth is reeling when he is.

This class of opera-goers never tire of abusing such singers as
Fraeulein Brandt and Herr Niemann because their voices are no longer as
mellow as in their youth, and sometimes weaken in a sustained note or
swerve for a second from the pitch. Such blemishes are no doubt to be
regretted, but they are a hundred times atoned for by the passion and
the variety of emotional expression that animate their voices, and by
their superb acting. Fraeulein Brandt's _Ortrud_, _Eglantine_, and
_Fides_ will be referred to generations hence as models, as will Herr
Niemann's _Tannhaeuser_, _Siegmund_, _Cortez_, _Lohengrin_, _Tristan_,
etc. New Yorkers must consider themselves fortunate in having heard
for two seasons the greatest of Wagnerian tenors--even though he is no
longer in his prime--the man who sang