only to be expected.

Of the numerous other Italian composers who bask in the sunshine of
popularity south of the Alps very few are known to fame beyond the
frontiers of Italy. The younger men follow religiously in the steps of
Mascagni or Puccini, while their elders still hang on to the skirts of
'Aida.' Giacomo Orefice won a success of curiosity in 1901 with his
'Chopin,' a strange work dealing in fanciful fashion with the story of
the Polish composer's life, the melodies of the opera being taken
entirely from Chopin's music.

Spinelli's 'A Basso Porto' (1895), which has been performed in English
by the Carl Rosa Opera Company, is redolent of Mascagni's influence, but
the nauseating incidents of the plot make 'Cavalleria,' by comparison,
seem chaste and classical. The libretto deals with the vengeance wreaked
by a villainous Neapolitan street loafer upon a woman who has played him
false--a vengeance which takes the form of ruining her son by drink and
play, and of attempting to seduce her daughter. In the end this
egregious ruffian is murdered in the street by the mother of his two
victims, just in time to prevent his being knifed by the members of a
secret society whom he had betrayed to justice. The music is not without
dramatic vigour, and it has plenty of melody of a rough and ready kind.
There is technical skill, too, in the treatment of the voices and in the
orchestration, but hardly enough to reconcile an English audience to so
offensive a book. Salvatore Auteri-Manzocchi has never repeated the
early success of 'Dolores,' and Spiro Samara, a Greek by birth, but an
Italian by training and sympathies, seems to have lost the secret of the
delicate imagination which nearly made 'Flora Mirabilis' a European
success, though his 'Martire,' a work of crude sensationalism, enjoyed
an ephemeral success in Italy. Franchetti, the composer of 'Asrael,'
'Cristoforo Colombo,' and other works, conceived upon a scale grandiose
rather than grand, appears anxious to emulate the theatrical glories of
Meyerbeer, and to make up for poverty of inspiration by spectacular
magnificence, but none of his operas has yet succeeded in crossing the
Alps.

CHAPTER XIII

MODERN GERMAN AND SLAVONIC OPERA

CORNELIUS--GOETZ--GOLDMARK--HUMPERDINCK--STRAUSS--
SMETANA--GLINKA--PADEREWSKI

The history of music furnishes more than one instance of the paralysing
effect which the influence of a great genius is apt to exercise upon his