"Jephtha's Tochter" (Munich, 1813),
Generali, "Il voto di Jefte" (1827), Sanpieri, "La Figlia di Jefte"
(1872). Luis Cepeda produced a Spanish opera in Madrid in 1845, and a
French opera, in five acts and a prologue, by Monteclaire, was
prohibited, after one performance, by Cardinal de Noailles in 1832.

Judith, the widow of Manasseh, who delivered her native city of
Bethulia from the Assyrian Holofernes, lulling him to sleep with her
charms and then striking off his drunken head with a falchion, though
an Apocryphal personage, is the most popular of Israelitish heroines.
The record shows the operas "Judith und Holofernes" by Leopold
Kotzeluch (1799), "Giuditta" by S. Levi (1844), Achille Peri (1860),
Righi (1871), and Sarri (1875). Naumann wrote a "Judith" in 1858,
Doppler another in 1870, and Alexander Seroff a Russian opera under the
same title in 1863. Martin Roder, who used to live in Boston, composed
a "Judith," but it was never performed, while George W. Chadwick's
"Judith," half cantata, half opera, which might easily be fitted for
the stage, has had to rest content with a concert performance at a
Worcester (Mass.) festival.

The memory of Esther, the queen of Ahasuerus, who saved her people from
massacre, is preserved and her deed celebrated by the Jews in their
gracious festival of Purim. A gorgeous figure for the stage, she has
been relegated to the oratorio platform since the end of the eighteenth
century. Racine's tragedy "Athalie" has called out music from Abbe
Vogler, Gossec, Boieldieu, Mendelssohn, and others, and a few
oratorios, one by Handel, have been based on the story of the woman
through whom idolatry was introduced into Judah; but I have no record
of any Athalia opera.

CHAPTER III

RUBINSTEIN'S "GEISTLICHE OPER"

I have a strong belief in the essential excellence of Biblical subjects
for the purposes of the lyric drama--at least from an historical point
of view. I can see no reason against but many reasons in favor of a
return to the stage of the patriarchal and heroic figures of the people
who are a more potent power in the world to-day, despite their
dispersal and loss of national unity, than they were in the days of
their political grandeur and glory. Throughout the greater part of his
creative career Anton Rubinstein was the champion of a similar idea. Of
the twenty works which he wrote for the theatre, including ballets, six
were on Biblical subjects, and to promote a propaga