representation at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, on March 25,
1914.

The circumstance to which I have alluded as worthy of comment was due,
I fancy, more to the business methods of modern publishers than to a
want of appreciation of the operas in Italy, though

[figure: a musical score excerpt. A page of the Score of the German
"Donne Curiose"]

Signor Wolf-Ferrari sought to meet the taste of his countrymen
(assuming that the son of a German father and a Venetian mother is to
be set down as an Italian) when he betrayed the true bent of his genius
and sought to join the ranks of the Italian veritists in his "Giojelli
della Madonna." However, that is not the question I am desirous to
discuss just now when the first impressions of "Le Donne Curiose" come
flocking back to my memory. The book is a paraphrase of Goldoni's
comedy of the same name, made (and very deftly made) for the composer
by Count Luigi Sugana. It turns on the curiosity of a group of women
concerning the doings of their husbands and sweethearts at a club from
which they are excluded. The action is merely a series of incidents in
which the women (the wives by rifling the pockets of their husbands,
the maidens by wheedling, cajoling, and playing upon the feelings of
their sweethearts) obtain the keys of the club-room, and effect an
entrance only to find that instead of gambling, harboring mistresses,
seeking the philosopher's stone, or digging for treasure, as is
variously suspected, the men are enjoying an innocent supper. In their
eagerness to see all that is going on, the women betray their presence.
Then there follow scoldings, contrition, forgiveness, a graceful
minuet, and the merriment runs out in a wild furlana.

Book and score of the opera hark back a century or more in their
methods of expression. The incidents of the old comedy are as loosely
strung together as those of "Le Nozze di Figaro," and the parallel is
carried further by the similarity between the instrumental apparatus of
Mozart and Wolf-Ferrari and the dependence of both on melody, rather
than orchestral or harmonic device, as the life-blood of the music upon
which the comedy floats. It is Mozart's orchestra that the modern
composer uses ("the only proper orchestra for comedy," as Berlioz
said), eschewing even those "epical instruments," the trombones. It
would not do to push the parallel too far, though a keen listener might
feel tempted also to see a point of semblance i