country girl, the second a village 'Romeo
and Juliet,' showing how an internecine feud between two brothers is
ended by the mutual love of their children. Mascagni's melodramatic
style was ill suited to idylls of this kind. He drowned the pretty
little stories in oceans of perfervid orchestration, and banged all the
sentiment out of them with drums and cymbals. Yet, in the midst of the
desert of coarseness and vulgarity came oases of delicate fancy and
imagination. The 'Cherry Duet' in 'L'Amico Fritz,' and the _Cicaleccio_
chorus in 'I Rantzau,' are models of refinement and finish, which are
doubly delightful by reason of their incongruous environment.
Unfortunately such gems as these only make the coarseness of their
setting the more conspicuous, and on the whole the sooner the world
forgets about 'L'Amico Fritz' and 'I Rantzau' the better it will be for
Mascagni's reputation. 'Guglielmo Ratcliff' and 'Silvano,' both produced
in 1895, have not been heard out of Italy, nor is there much
probability that they will ever cross the Alps. 'Zanetto' (1896), on
the other hand, seems to contain the best work which Mascagni has yet
given to the world. It is founded upon Francois Coppee's charming
duologue, 'Le Passant,' a graceful scene between a world-weary courtesan
and a youthful troubadour who passes beneath her balcony. Mascagni's
music, which is scored only for strings and harp, is both delicate and
refined, and instinct with a tender melancholy, for which it would be
vain to look in his earlier works. 'Iris' (1898), an opera on a rather
unpleasant Japanese story, has met with a certain degree of favour, but
'Le Maschere' (1901), an attempt to introduce Harlequin and Columbine to
the lyric stage, failed completely, nor does 'Amica' (1905) seen to have
done much to rehabilitate the composer's waning reputation. Mascagni has
as yet done little to justify the extravagant eulogies with which his
first work was greeted, and his warmest admirers are beginning to fear
that the possibility of his doing something to redeem the early promise
of 'Cavalleria' is getting rather remote.

Leoncavallo, though older than Mascagni, must be regarded as in a
certain sense his follower, since his most popular work, 'Pagliacci,'
was undoubtedly inspired by 'Cavalleria Rusticana.' The story begins
with the arrival of a troupe of travelling comedians, or _Pagliacci_, in
an Italian village. All is not harmony in the little company. Tonio (the
Tadd