pelled to see in his project
chiefly a jealous ambition to rival the great and triumphant
accomplishment of Richard Wagner, but it is possible that he had a
prescient eye on a coming time. The desire to combine pictures with
oratorio has survived the practice which prevailed down to the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Handel used scenes and costumes
when he produced his "Esther," as well as his "Acis and Galatea," in
London. Dittersdorf has left for us a description of the stage
decorations prepared for his oratorios when they were performed in the
palace of the Bishop of Groswardein. Of late years there have been a
number of theatrical representations of Mendelssohn's "Elijah." I have
witnessed as well as heard a performance of "Acis and Galatea" and been
entertained with the spectacle of Polyphemus crushing the head of
presumptuous Acis with a stave like another Fafner while singing "Fly,
thou massy ruin, fly" to the bludgeon which was playing understudy for
the fatal rock.

This diverting incident brings me to a consideration of one of the
difficulties which stand in the way of effective stage pictures
combined with action in the case of some of the most admired of the
subjects for oratorios or sacred opera. It was not the Lord Chamberlain
who stood in the way of Saint-Saens's "Samson et Dalila" in the United
States for many years, but the worldly wisdom of opera managers who
shrank from attempting to stage the spectacle of the falling Temple of
Dagon, and found in the work itself a plentiful lack of that dramatic
movement which is to-day considered more essential to success than
beautiful and inspiriting music. "Samson et Dalila" was well known in
its concert form when the management of the Metropolitan Opera House
first attempted to introduce it as an opera. It had a single
performance in the season of 1894-1895 and then sought seclusion from
the stage lamps for twenty years. It was, perhaps, fortunate for the
work that no attempt was made to repeat it, for, though well sung and
satisfactorily acted, the toppling of the pillars of the temple,
discreetly supported by too visible wires, at the conclusion made a
stronger appeal to the popular sense of the ridiculous than even
Saint-Saens's music could withstand. It is easy to inveigh against the
notion frivolous fribbles and trumpery trappings receive more attention
than the fine music which ought to be recognized as the soul of the
work, the vital spark which i