OPERA AND LYRIC DRAMA It is sometimes, indeed, frequently, advisable to study history backward, permitting the more intimate knowledge which we have of things in their present and familiar mani festations to throw light on the phases which those things presented long ago. Progress is not in a direct line, but in a spiral direction. The movement is onward, but ever and anon a point is reached which seems to make the conclusion of a cycle, and to be nearer the point of departure than any other point in the course. The principle is illustrated in the history of that mixed art form popularly called opera, and it is from this point that this historical and analytical study proceeds. Essentially, despite the immeasurably greater potency of expression which all its component elements have attained, it approaches the art form with which musical historians generally begin its story, more closely than it does the opera of only a century ago; i. e., the phase which the art form had reached after two centuries of development. This is true even in the simple matter of terminology. Since Wagner, composers have been averse to the term which suf ficed them for two hundred years and have tried to discover one which should more specifically describe the mixed art form of music and drama. The term which Wagner in vented, " Musikdrama," is nothing more nor less than a German form of the old Italian " Dramma per la musica," while " opera " is but a convenient but vague and ill-con structed abbreviation of " opera in musica," a term which came into use after the lyric drama had become so com pletely artificialized that its original aim and its original methods have been all but forgotten. A return to first prin ciples has brought with it a return to designations which are more lucid and accurate than " opera " could ever be, except . in an arbitrary and conventional sense. Caccini's " Eurydice," one of two simultaneous settings of the work which the majority of historians have agreed to call the first opera and which, with its companion by Peri, was pub lished in Florence A. D. 1600, had only this title (in Italian) : " The Eurydice; composed in music in represent ative style by Giulio Caccini, called the Roman." " Orfeo,"
by Monteverde, produced in Mantua in 1607 and published two years later, was called on the title page, "A Fable in Music " (or tale, or story). Later composers of the Seven teenth Century hit upon " Drama in Music," " Tragedy in Music," " Comedy in Music," and finally " Opera in Music " (that is, work, or works), of which the term " Opera," which served down to our own day, was an abbreviation. The general term was now qualified by an adjective indic ative of the mood and manner of the work, such as " Grand Opera," or " Comic Opera," and its poetical contents, " His torical Opera," " Romantic Opera," and the like, the sig nificance of which may be reserved kir discussion presently. Richard Wagner called all his compositions for the stage operas down to " Tristan and Isolde," which he designated on the title page as an "Action in Three Acts " (" Handlung in drei Aufzugen ") ; his tetralogy, " The Ring of Nibelung," he called a " Stage Festival Play " (" Buhnenfestspiel "), and to emphasize its solemn character, " Parsifal " received the ponderous designation, "A Stage Consecrating Festival Play" (" Buhnenweihfestspiel "). Of all his later works, he spoke collectively as " music-dramas," though I have preferred to translate the term, with defensible (or at least pardonable) license, as " Lyric Dramas." Verdi called "Aida " an "opera in four acts" (" Opera in quattro Atti"), but his "OteIlo" he designated a " Lyric Drama" ("Dramma Lirico "), and " Falstaff " a " Lyric Comedy " (" Commedia Lirica "). Massenet's " Navarraise " is a " Lyric Episode in two Acts ;" Puccini's " Madame Butterfly," a "Japanese Trag edy ;" Cilea's "Adriana Lecouvreur," a " Comedy Drama," and so it goes on, the composers finding, when they can, titles descriptive of the dramatic style of their pieces, but refusing to give them any designation beyond the titles indicative of their dramatic contents. Thus, we have a return to the custom which prevailed while the art form was in its very beginnings and when its creators were filled with a solemn notion of its dignity and its beauty.