e
operas which Rossini composed for the Paris Grand Opera and that the
formula is become so common that it may be set down as an operatic
convention, a convention, moreover, which even the iconoclast Wagner
left undisturbed. One might think that the propriety of prayer in a
religious drama would have been enforced upon the mind of a classicist
like Goethe by his admiration for the antique, but it was the fact that
Rossini's opera showed the Israelites upon their knees in supplication
to God that set the great German poet against "Mose." In a conversation
recorded by Eckermann as taking place in 1828, we hear him uttering his
objection to the work: "I do not understand how you can separate and
enjoy separately the subject and the music. You pretend here that the
subject is worthless, but you are consoled for it by a feast of
excellent music. I wonder that your nature is thus organized that your
ear can listen to charming sounds while your sight, the most perfect of
your senses, is tormented by absurd objects. You will not deny that
your 'Moses' is in effect very absurd. The curtain is raised and people
are praying. This is all wrong. The Bible says that when you pray you
should go into your chamber and close the door. Therefore, there should
be no praying in the theatre. As for me, I should have arranged a
wholly different 'Moses.' At first I should have shown the children of
Israel bowed down by countless odious burdens and suffering from the
tyranny of the Egyptian rulers. Then you would have appreciated more
easily what Moses deserved from his race, which he had delivered from a
shameful oppression." "Then," says Mr. Philip Hale, who directed my
attention to this interesting passage, "Goethe went on to reconstruct
the whole opera. He introduced, for instance, a dance of the Egyptians
after the plague of darkness was dispelled."

May not one criticise Goethe? If he so greatly reverenced prayer,
according to its institution under the New Dispensation, why did he not
show regard also for the Old and respect the verities of history
sufficiently to reserve his ballet till after the passage of the Red
Sea, when Moses celebrated the miracle with a song and "Miriam, the
prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all
the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances"?

CHAPTER II

BIBLE STORIES IN OPERA AND ORATORIO

It was the fond belief of Dr. Chrysander, born of his deep devotion