t--they represent extremes.

It is much more likely that outside of its purely literary aspect (a
large aspect in every respect in. France) the Moussorgsky cult of the
last few years was a mere outgrowth of the political affiliation
between France and Russia; as such it may be looked upon in the same
light as the sudden appreciation of Berlioz which was a product of the
Chauvinism which followed the Franco-Prussian War. It is easy even for
young people of the day in which I write to remember when a Wagner
opera at the Academie Nationale raised a riot, and when the dances at
the Moulin Rouge and such places could not begin until the band had
played the Russian national hymn.

Were it not for considerations of this sort it would be surprising to
contemplate the fact that Moussorgsky has been more written and talked
about in France than he was in his native Russia, and that even his
friend Rimsky-Korsakoff, to whose revision of the score "Boris
Godounoff" owes its continued existence, has been subjected to much
rude criticism because of his work, though we can only think of it as
taken up in a spirit of affection and admiration. He and the Russians,
with scarcely an exception, say that his labors were in the line of
purification and rectification; but the modern extremists will have it
that by remedying its crudities of harmonization and instrumentation he
weakened it--that what he thought its artistic blemishes were its
virtues. Of that we are in no position to speak, nor ought any one be
rash enough to make the proclamation until the original score is
published, and then only a Russian or a musician familiar with the
Russian tongue and its genius. The production of the opera outside of
Russia and in a foreign language ought to furnish an occasion to demand
a stay of the artistic cant which is all too common just now in every
country.

We are told that "Boris Godounoff" is the first real Russian opera that
America has ever heard. In a sense that may be true. The present
generation has heard little operatic music by Russian composers.
Rubinstein's "Nero" was not Russian music in any respect. "Pique Dame,"
by Tschaikowsky, also performed at the Metropolitan Opera House, had
little in it that could be recognized as characteristically Russian.
"Eugene Onegin" we know only from concert performances, and its
Muscovitism was a negligible quantity. The excerpts from other Russian
operas have been few and they demonstrated noth