the transformation reason for the English failure. At any
rate, he commented, in his "Reminiscences of the Opera," "That the
opera thus lost much of its original character, especially in the scene
where the captive Israelites became very uninteresting Babylonians, and
was thereby shorn of one element of success present on the Continent,
is undeniable."

There is another case even more to the purpose of this present
discussion. In 1818 Rossini produced his opera "Mose in Egitto" in
Naples. The strength of the work lay in its choruses; yet two of them
were borrowed from the composer's "Armida." In 1822 Bochsa performed it
as an oratorio at Covent Garden, but, says John Ebers in his "Seven
Years of the King's Theatre," published in 1828, "the audience
accustomed to the weighty metal and pearls of price of Handel's
compositions found the 'Moses' as dust in the balance in comparison."
"The oratorio having failed as completely as erst did Pharaoh's host,"
Ebers continues, "the ashes of 'Mose in Egitto' revived in the form of
an opera entitled 'Pietro l'Eremita.' Moses was transformed into Peter.
In this form the opera was as successful as it had been unfortunate as
an oratorio.... 'Mose in Egitto' was condemned as cold, dull, and
heavy. 'Pietro l'Eremita,' Lord Sefton, one of the most competent
judges of the day, pronounced to be the most effective opera produced
within his recollection; and the public confirmed the justice of the
remark, for no opera during my management had such unequivocal
success." [Footnote: "Seven Years of the King's Theatre," by John
Ebers, pp. 157, 158.] This was not the end of the opera's vicissitudes,
to some of which I shall recur presently; let this suffice now:

Rossini rewrote it in 1827, adding some new music for the Academie
Royal in Paris, and called it "Moise"; when it was revived for the
Covent Garden oratorios, London, in 1833, it was not only performed
with scenery and dresses, but recruited with music from Handel's
oratorio and renamed "The Israelites in Egypt; or the Passage of the
Red Sea"; when the French "Moise" reached the Royal Italian Opera,
Covent Garden, in April, 1850, it had still another name, "Zora,"
though Chorley does not mention the fact in his "Thirty Years' Musical
Recollections," probably because the failure of the opera which he
loved grieved him too deeply. For a long time "Moses" occupied a
prominent place among oratorios. The Handel and Haydn Society of Boston
a