a short time,
dying, not by the command of Herod, but crushed under the shield of
popular opinion. The operation, though effective, was not as swift as
it might have been had operatic conditions been different than they are
in New York, and before it was accomplished a newer phase of Strauss's
pathological art had offered itself as a nervous, excitation. It was
"Elektra," and under the guise of an ancient religious ideal, awful but
pathetic, the people were asked to find artistic delight in the
contemplation of a woman's maniacal thirst for a mother's blood. It is
not necessary to recall the history of the opera at the Manhattan Opera
House to show that the artistic sanity of New York was proof against
the new poison.

Hugo von Hoffmannsthal had aided Strauss in this brew and collaborated
with him in the next, which, it was hoped, probably because of the
difference in its concoction and ingredients, would make his rein even
more taut than it had ever been on theatrical managers and their
public. From the Greek classics he turned to the comedy of the
Beaumarchais period. Putting their heads together, the two wrote "Der
Rosenkavalier." It was perhaps shrewd on their part that they avoided
all allusion to the opera buffa of the period and called their work a
"comedy for music." It enabled them, in the presence of the ignorant,
to assume a virtue which they did not possess; but it is questionable
if that circumstance will help them any. It is only the curious critic
nowadays who takes the trouble to look at the definition, or epithet,
on a title page. It is the work which puts the hallmark on itself; not
the whim of the composer. It would have been wise, very wise indeed,
had Hoffmannsthal avoided everything which might call up a comparison
between himself and Beaumarchais. It was simply fatal to Strauss that
he tried to avoid all comparison between his treatment of an eighteenth
century comedy and Mozart's. One of his devices was to make use of the
system of musical symbols which are irrevocably associated with
Wagner's method of composition. Mozart knew nothing of this system, but
he had a better one in his Beaumarchaisian comedy, which "Der
Rosenkavalier" recalls; it was that of thematic expression for each new
turn in the dramatic situation--a system which is carried out so
brilliantly in "Le Nozze di Figaro" that there is nothing, even in "Die
Meistersinger," which can hold a candle to it. Another was to build up
the