noblest of their kind--Mehul's
"Joseph" and Rossini's "Mose in Egitto." Mehul's opera, more than a
decade older than Rossini's, still holds a place on the stages of
France and Germany, and this despite the fact that it foregoes two
factors which are popularly supposed to be essential to operatic
success--a love episode and woman's presence and participation in the
action. The opera, which is in three acts, was brought forward at the
Theatre Feydeau in Paris on February 17, 1807. It owed its origin to a
Biblical tragedy entitled "Omasis," by Baour Lormian. The subject--the
sale of Joseph by his brothers into Egyptian slavery, his rise to
power, his forgiveness of the wrong attempted against him, and his
provision of a home for the people of Israel in the land of Goshen--had
long been popular with composers of oratorios. The list of these works
begins with Caldara's "Giuseppe" in 1722. Metastasio's "Giuseppe
riconosciuto" was set by half a dozen composers between 1733 and 1788.
Handel wrote his English oratorio in 1743; G. A. Macfarren's was
performed at the Leeds festival of 1877. Lormian thought it necessary
to introduce a love episode into his tragedy, but Alexander Duval, who
wrote the book for Mehul's opera, was of the opinion that the diversion
only enfeebled the beautiful if austere picture of patriarchal domestic
life delineated in the Bible. He therefore adhered to tradition and
created a series of scenes full of beauty, dignity, and pathos, simple
and strong in spite of the bombast prevalent in the literary style of
the period. Mehul's music is marked by grandeur, simplicity, lofty
sentiment, and consistent severity of manner. The composer's
predilection for ecclesiastical music, created, no doubt, by the blind
organist who taught him in his childhood and nourished by his studies
and labors at the monastery under the gifted Hauser, found opportunity
for expression in the religious sentiments of the drama, and his
knowledge of plain chant is exhibited in the score "the simplicity,
grandeur, and dramatic truth of which will always command the
admiration of impartial musicians," remarks Gustave Choquet. The
enthusiasm of M. Tiersot goes further still, for he says that the music
of "Joseph" is more conspicuous for the qualities of dignity and
sonority than that of Handel's oratorio. The German Hanslick, to whom
the absence from the action of the "salt of the earth, women" seemed
disastrous, nevertheless does not hes