Edward FitzGerald, though
devoted to the opera in his own way, yet took what can only be called
a superficial view of its possibilities.

The Englishman who said of the opera, 'At the first act I was
enchanted; the second I could just bear; and at the third I ran away',
is a fair illustration of an attitude common in the eighteenth
century; and in France things were not much better, even in days when
stage magnificence reached a point hardly surpassed in history. La
Bruyere's 'Je ne sais comment l'opera avec une musique si parfaite, et
une depense toute royale, a pu reussir a m'ennuyer', shows how little
he had realised the fatiguing effect of theatrical splendour too
persistently displayed. St. Evremond finds juster cause for his bored
state of mind in the triviality of the subject-matter of operas, and
his words are worth quoting at some length: 'La langueur ordinaire ou
je tombe aux operas, vient de ce que je n'en ai jamais vu qui ne m'ait
paru meprisable dans la disposition du sujet, et dans les vers. Or,
c'est vainement que l'oreille est flattee, et que les yeux sont
charmes, si l'esprit ne se trouve pas satisfait; mon ame
d'intelligence avec mon esprit plus qu'avec mes sens, forme une
resistance aux impressions qu'elle peut recevoir, ou pour le moins
elle manque d'y preter un consentement agreable, sans lequel les
objets les plus voluptueux meme ne sauraient me donner un grand
plaisir. Une sottise chargee de musique, de danses, de machines, de
decorations, est une sottise magnifique; c'est un vilain fonds sous de
beaux dehors, ou je penetre avec beaucoup de desagrement.'

The cant phrase in use in FitzGerald's days, 'the lyric stage', might
have conveyed a hint of the truth to a man who cared for the forms of
literature as well as its essence. For, in its highest development,
opera is most nearly akin to lyrical utterances in poetry, and the most
important musical revolution of the present century has been in the
direction of increasing, not diminishing, the lyrical quality of
operatic work. The Elizabethan writers--not only the dramatists, but the
authors of romances--interspersed their blank verse or their prose
narration with short lyrical poems, just as in the days of Mozart the
airs and concerted pieces in an opera were connected by wastes of
recitative that were most aptly called 'dry'; and as it was left to a
modern poet to tell, in a series of lyrics succeeding one another
without interval, a dramatic st