[Sidenote: _"Fidelio."_]

_"Er spricht von Tod und Wunde!"_

to

_"Er spricht vom todten Hunde!"_

as is a prevalent custom among the irreverent choristers of Germany.

Addison confesses that he was often afraid when seeing the Italian
performers "chattering in the vehemence of action," that they were
calling the audience names and abusing them among themselves. I do not
know how to measure the morals and manners of our Italian singers
against those of Addison's time, but I do know that many of the things
which they say before our very faces for their own diversion are not
complimentary to our intelligence. I hope I have a proper respect for
Mr. Gilbert's "bashful young potato," but I do not think it right
while we are sympathizing with the gentle passion of _Siebel_ to have
his representative bring an offering of flowers and, looking us full
in the face, sing:

_"Le patate d'amor,
O cari fior!"_

[Sidenote: _"Faust."_]

[Sidenote: _Porpora's "Credo."_]

It isn't respectful, and it enables the cynics of to-day to say, with
the poetasters and fiddlers of Addison's day, that nothing is capable
of being well set to music that is not nonsense. Operatic words were
once merely stalking-horses for tunes, but that day is past. We used
to smile at Brignoli's "_Ah si! ah si! ah si!_" which did service for
any text in high passages; but if a composer should, for the
accommodation of his music, change the wording of the creed into
"_Credo, non credo, non credo in unum Deum_," as Porpora once did, we
should all cry out for his excommunication.

As an art-form the opera has frequently been criticised as an
absurdity, and it is doubtless owing to such a conviction that many
people are equally indifferent to the language employed and the
sentiments embodied in the words. Even so serious a writer as George
Hogarth does not hesitate in his "Memoirs of the Opera" to defend this
careless attitude.

[Sidenote: _Are words unessential?_]

"The words of an air are of small importance to the
comprehension of the business of the piece," he says; "they
merely express a sentiment, a reflection, a feeling; it is
quite enough if their general import is known, and this may
most frequently be gathered from the situation, aided by the
character and expression of the music."

[Sidenote: _"Il Trovatore."_]

I, myself, have known an ardent lover of music who resolutely refused
to look into