ayed to teach his own
people. For the present, though we have abolished many absurdities
which grew out of a conception of opera that was based upon the
simple, sensuous delight which singing gave, the charm of music is
still supreme, and we can sit out an opera without giving a thought to
the words uttered by the singers. The popular attitude is fairly
represented by that of Boileau, when he went to hear "Atys" and
requested the box-keeper to put him in a place where he could hear
Lully's music, which he loved, but not Quinault's words, which he
despised.

[Sidenote: _Past and present._]

It is interesting to note that in this respect the condition of
affairs in London in the early part of the eighteenth century, which
seemed so monstrously diverting to Addison, was like that in Hamburg
in the latter part of the seventeenth, and in New York at the end of
the nineteenth. There were three years in London when Italian and
English were mixed in the operatic representations.

"The king or hero of the play generally spoke in Italian and
his slaves answered him in English; the lover frequently
made his court and gained the heart of his princess in a
language which she did not understand."

[Sidenote: _Polyglot opera._]

At length, says Addison, the audience got tired of understanding half
the opera, "and to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of
thinking, so ordered it that the whole opera was performed in an
unknown tongue."

[Sidenote: _Perversions of texts._]

There is this difference, however, between New York and London and
Hamburg at the period referred to: while the operatic ragout was
compounded of Italian and English in London, Italian and German in
Hamburg, the ingredients here are Italian, French, and German, with no
admixture of the vernacular. Strictly speaking, our case is more
desperate than that of our foreign predecessors, for the development
of the lyric drama has lifted its verbal and dramatic elements into a
position not dreamed of two hundred years ago. We might endure with
equanimity to hear the chorus sing

[Sidenote: _"Robert le Diable."_]

"_La soupe aux choux se fait dans la marmite,
Dans la marmite on fait la soupe aux choux_"

at the beginning of "Robert le Diable," as tradition says used to be
done in Paris, but we surely ought to rise in rebellion when the
chorus of guards change their muttered comments on Pizarro's furious
aria in "Fidelio" from