ere are scores of cities where Wagner would be even more popular
than he is, were it not for the woful rarity of competent dramatic
singers and conductors.

There is, therefore, no hope for the _Italianissimi_, who sigh for
their maccaroni arias and their "Ernani" and "Gazza Ladra" soup.
Italian opera has ceased to exist in New York, Paris, Berlin, Vienna,
and St. Petersburg, and even in Italy dramatic music of the modern
school is gradually driving out the old-fashioned lyric and florid
opera.

In New York, moreover, the press is almost unanimous in favor of
German opera, and the press, as a rule, is omnipotent in theatrical
matters. I am convinced, for instance, that one of the principal
reasons why Wagner was more rapidly acclimated in New York than in the
German capitals is that most of the leading German critics are old
men--too old to submit readily to Wagner's revolutionary tendencies;
whereas in New York all the critics are young men, who only needed to
hear a few good performances of Wagner's operas to be filled with an
enthusiasm for them, with which many of their readers could not help
being infected.

Still another important point must be borne in mind: the fact that
the vastness of the Metropolitan auditorium makes it impossible to
hear the weak voices and the thin scores of Italians to advantage.
_Ergo_, if this house remains the centre of music in New York, there
can be no question that, as I have just stated, the prospect for the
next decade or two is, either German Opera or No Opera.

A series of interviews published in the newspapers indicate that the
indifference of the stockholders to German music has been greatly
exaggerated; and the vote that was taken on January 27, 1888, stood
forty to nine in favor of continuing German opera, with an assessment
of three thousand two hundred dollars on each box. Not a few of the
stockholders would, indeed, prefer "Siegfried" to "Ernani," even if
"Ernani" could be depended on for as large audiences as Wagner's
opera, which is far from being the case; and I have myself heard some
of them confess that after repeatedly hearing Wagner's later operas,
they discovered in them a constant stream of melody where all had
seemed to them at first a mere chaos of sound. Some of the
stockholders, on the other hand, are so absolutely unmusical that they
do not know the meaning of the words "tenor" and "soprano," and if
blindfolded could not tell if "Faust" or "Aida" was bei