go with even less success. Borodin's 'Prince Igor,'
and 'Die Mainacht' by Rimsky-Korsakov, are thought highly of by the
fellow-countrymen of the composers, but neither work has succeeded in
crossing the frontier of Russia.

Poland has not hitherto taken a prominent place in the history of opera,
and the successful production of 'Manru' (1901), an opera by Ignaz
Paderewski, the world-famous pianist, is hardly to be taken as the
foundation of a new school. The story deals with the fortunes of a
gipsy, Manru, who marries Ulana, a peasant girl, but is won back to
gipsy life by the fascinations of Asa, the princess of his tribe. He
rejoins his own people in spite of Ulana's entreaties and a love-potion
which she administers, but is killed by a gipsy rival, while Ulana in
despair throws herself into a lake. Paderewski's music is thoroughly
German in style, but he makes clever use of gipsy tunes and rhythms,
which give a welcome variety to the score.

The genius of Scandinavian musicians seems to have little in common with
the stage. The works of Hartmann and Weyse are not known beyond the
boundaries of Denmark. Of late years, however, works by August Enna, a
young Danish composer, have been performed in various German towns. 'Die
Hexe' and 'Cleopatra' won a good deal of success, but the composer's
more recent operas, 'Aucassin und Nicolette' and 'Das Streichholzmaedel,'
have met with little favour.

CHAPTER XIV

ENGLISH OPERA

BALFE--WALLACE--BENEDICT--GORING THOMAS--MACKENZIE
STANFORD--SULLIVAN--SMYTH

Soon after the death of Purcell, the craze for Italian opera seems to
have banished native art completely from the English stage. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century, the most popular form of
entertainment consisted of operas set to a mixture of English and
Italian words, but after a time the town, to quote Addison, tired of
understanding only half the work, determined for the future to
understand none of it, and these hybrid works gave place, after the
arrival of Handel, to the splendid series of masterpieces extending from
'Rinaldo' to 'Deidamia.' From time to time attempts were made to gain a
footing for English opera in London, and in 1728 'The Beggar's Opera'
achieved a triumph so instantaneous and overwhelming as seriously to
affect the success of Handel's Italian enterprise at the Haymarket
Theatre. It is supposed, that the origin of 'The Beggar's Opera' is due
to a remark of Swift's that 'a Newga