inged thing that cries
Above some city, flaming fast to death."

The poem which Chorley quotes from was inspired by the performance of
the great Pasta in Simone Mayer's weak musical setting of the fable of
the Colchian sorceress, which crowded the opera-houses of Europe. The
life of the French classical tragedy, too, was powerfully assisted by
Rachel. Though the poem on which Cherubini worked was unworthy of his
genius, it could not be from this or from lack of interest in the theme
alone that this great work is so rarely performed; it is because there
have been not more than three or four actresses in the last hundred
years combining the great tragic and vocal requirements exacted by the
part. If the tragic genius of Pasta conld have been united with the
voice of a Catalani, made as it were of adamant and gold, Cherubini's
sublime musical creation would have found an adequate interpreter.
Mdlle. Tietjens, indeed, has been the only late dramatic singer who
dared essay so difficult a task. Musical students rank the instrumental
parts of this opera with the organ music of Bach, the choral fugues
of Handel, and the symphonies of Beethoven, for beauty of form and
originality of ideas.

On its first representation, on the 13th of March, 1797, one of the
journals, after praising its beauty, professed to discover imitations
of Mehul's manner in it. The latter composer, in an indignant rejoinder,
proclaimed himself and all others as overshadowed by Cherubini's genius:
a singular example of artistic humility and justice. Three years after
its performance in Paris, it was given at Berlin and Vienna, and stamped
by the Germans as one of the world's great musical masterpieces. This
work was a favorite one with Schubert, Beethoven, and Weber, and
there have been few great composers who have not put on record their
admiration of it.

As great, however, as "Medee" is ranked, "Les Deux Journees,"* produced
in 1800, is the opera on which Cherubim's fame as a dramatic composer
chiefly rests.

* In German known as "Die Wassertrager," in English "The
Water-Carriers."

Three hundred consecutive performances did not satisfy Paris; and
at Berlin and Frankfort, as well as in Italy, it was hailed with
acclamation. Bouilly was the author of the opera-story, suggested by the
generous action of a water-carrier toward a magistrate who was related
to the author. The story is so interesting, so admirably written, that
Goethe and