itate to institute a comparison
between "Joseph" and one of Mozart's latest operas. "In its mild,
passionless benevolence the entire role of Joseph in Mehul's opera," he
says, "reminds one strikingly of Mozart's 'Titus,' and not to the
advantage of the latter. The opera 'Titus' is the work of an
incomparably greater genius, but it belongs to a partly untruthful,
wholly modish, tendency (that of the old opera seria), while the genre
of 'Joseph' is thoroughly noble, true, and eminently dramatic. 'Joseph'
has outlived 'Titus.'" [Footnote: "Die Moderne Opera," p. 92.] Carl
Maria von Weber admired Mehul's opera greatly, and within recent years
Felix Weingartner has edited a German edition for which he composed
recitatives to take the place of the spoken dialogue of the original
book.

There is no story of passion in "Joseph." The love portrayed there is
domestic and filial; its objects are the hero's father, brothers, and
country--"Champs eternels, Hebron, douce vallee." It was not until our
own day that an author with a perverted sense which had already found
gratification in the stench of mental, moral, and physical decay
exhaled by "Salome" and "Elektra" nosed the piquant, pungent odor of
the episode of Potiphar's wife and blew it into the theatre. Joseph's
temptress did not tempt even the prurient taste which gave us the
Parisian operatic versions of the stories of Phryne, Thais, and
Messalina. Richard Strauss's "Josephslegende" stands alone in musical
literature. There is, indeed, only one reference in the records of
oratorio or opera to the woman whose grovelling carnality is made the
foil of Joseph's virtue in the story as told in the Book. That
reference is found in a singular trilogy, which was obviously written
more to disclose the possibilities of counterpoint than to set forth
the story--even if it does that, which I cannot say; the suggestion
comes only from a title. In August, 1852, Pietro Raimondi produced an
oratorio in three parts entitled, respectively, "Putifar," "Giuseppe
giusto," and "Giacobbe," at the Teatro Argentina, in Rome. The music of
the three works was so written that after each had been performed
separately, with individual principal singers, choristers, and
orchestras, they were united in a simultaneous performance. The success
of the stupendous experiment in contrapuntal writing was so great that
the composer fell in a faint amidst the applause of the audience and
died less than three months