From Italy the opera was introduced into Germany, where, more scientific and less sensuous than in Italy, it flourished in opposition to national as well as ecclesiastical music. Germany divides with Italy the honor of perfecting orchestral music and the opera. Gluck, educated in Italy, produced his Orfeo in Vienna, and then went to Paris, where the French adopted him as we did Handel. Mozart was the first composer of operas for the modern orchestra; Idomeneo, R Seraglio, Le Ho= di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Zauberflote are his principal operatic works, unsurpassed by anything that has suc ceeded them. The most important German operas composed since their date are Fiddio by Beethoven; Der Freischiitz, Euryanthe, and Oberon by Weber; Faust by Spohr; and the gorgeous operas of Meyerbeer—Robert is Diable, Les Huguenots and Le Prophete, and L'Etoile du Les Huguenots, notwithstanding its involving enormous difficulties in representation, keeps its place in every operatic theater in Europe. Wagner, the chief exponent of a more recent school, generally known as that of the "music cf the future," has produced the operas of Tunnhauser, Lohengrin, etc., which enjoy at present a large share of public favor in Germany, and have also become known in England.
In France, the earliest operatic representation of which we have any record was in 1582. About 1669 the abbot Perrin obtained from Louis XIV. the privilege of estab lishing an opera iu the French language at Paris, and in 1672 the privilege was trans ferred to Lulli, who may be considered the founder of the French lyrical drama. LuIli's popularity continued during a long period, and was only put an end to by the rise of the German Glfick, who, naturalized in Paris, produced there his 1pha:gbile Aulide and Alceste. It is greatly through Gilick's influence that the modern French opera has become what it is, a composite work combining French, German, and Italian elements. 'Its best-known productions include M6hul's Joseph, Hal6vy's Juice, Auber's Masan& .•a Diarolo, and Diamans de la Couronne, and Gounod's recent opera of Faust. The Italian opera, introduced in Paris in 1646 by cardinal Mazarin, and super seded in 1670, was revived in the beginning of the present century, and has since flourished side by side with the national opera of France.
The possibility of a national English opera seems first to have been shown by Pur cell, who through Humplireys,•had learned much from Lulli. His music to Dryden's King Arthur is very beautiful, though kept throughout subordinate to the business of the drama. The Beggar's Opera, as set to music by Dr. Pepusch, was a selection of the airs most popular at the time. It has retained its place on the stage, as also has Dr. Arne's Artaxerxes, a translation from Metastasio adapted to music rich in melody. The importation of the Italian opera put a stop, for a time at least, to the further development of an opera in England. In 1706 Amino', with English words adapted to Italians airs, was performed at Drury Lane. In 1710 Almahide, wholly in Italian, was performed exclusively by Italian singers. at the Haymarket theater; and a succession of attempts of the kind ended in the permanent establishment of the Italian opera. The arrival of Handel in 4igland decided the future progress of the opera. That great master was during the greater part of his life an opera composer and opera manager. He composed for the London stage no fewer than 44 operas, German, Italian, and English. These now forgotten operas were of course not the complex compositions of a later period, which could not have been performed in the then imperfect state of orchestral instru ments. A recitative was set to music nearly as fast as the composer could put notes on paper, and the songs were accompanied in general by only one violin and bass, the com poser sitting at the harpsichord, and supplying what was wanting. From Handel's time onwards, the opera flourished as an exotic in Britain the singers being foreign, and the works performed being either Italian or occasionally German or French. Attempts crowned with some measure of success have latterly been made to establish an opera of a national character in England. Balfe's Bohemian Girl and Rose of Castile are the best works which this school has produced, and have attained, with other operas by Balfe, Wallace, and Macfarren, a considerable measure of popularity. See Hogarth's Memoirs of the Opera (London, 1851).