n "Fidelio" and equal to anything in Wagner's
music-dramas; and most stupendous of all is the finale, with its
tragic blending of the grotesque and the terrible. Or, if one
considers detail, in no other opera do the characters depict
themselves in every phrase they utter as they do in "Don Giovanni."
The songs stamp Mozart as the greatest song-writer who has lived, with
the exception of Handel, whose opera songs are immeasurably beyond all
others save Mozart's, and a little beyond them. The mere musicianship
is as consummate as Bach's, for, like Bach, Mozart possessed that
facility which is fatal to many men, but combined with it a high
sincerity, a greedy thirst for the beautiful, and an emotional force
that prevented it being fatal to him. For delicacy, subtlety, due
brilliancy, and strength, the orchestral colouring cannot be matched.
And no music is more exclusively its own composer's, has less in it of
other composers'. Beethoven is Beethoven _plus_ Mozart, Wagner is
Wagner _plus_ Weber and Beethoven; but from every page of Mozart's
scores Mozart alone looks at you, with sad laughter in his eyes, and
unspeakable tenderness, the tenderness of the giants, of Handel, Bach,
and Beethoven, though perhaps Mozart is tenderest of them all. He
cannot write a comic scene for a poor clownish Masetto without
caressing him with a divinely beautiful "Cheto, cheto, mi vo' star,"
and in presence of death or human distress the strangest, sweetest
things fall from his lips. And finally, he is always the perfect
artist without reproach; there is nothing wanting and nothing in
excess; as he himself said on one occasion, his scores contain exactly
the right number of notes. This is "Don Giovanni" as one may see it a
century after its birth: a faultless masterpiece; yet (in England at
least) it only gets an occasional performance, through the freak of a
prima donna, who, as the sage critic said of Mozart, is undoubtedly "a
little _passee_ now."

After all, this is hardly surprising. Perfect art wants perfect
listeners, and just now we are much too eager for excitement, too
impatient of mere beauty, to listen perfectly to perfect music. And
there are other reasons why "Don Giovanni" should not appeal to this
generation. For many years it was the sport of the prima donna, and
conductors and singers conspired to load it with traditional
Costamongery, until at last the "Don Giovanni" we knew became an
entirely different thing from the "Don