=The Influence of the Opéra Comique=.—The Opéra Comique, as founded by Boieldieu and continued by Auber and Hérold, bears a distinctively national character to a much greater degree than the more cosmopolitan Grand Opéra. Unlike this, its development was entirely due to native composers who gave it the thoroughly Gallic impress of spirit, vivacity, and truth to nature which carried it triumphantly through all the theatres of Europe. Thus it served to counteract in part the reactionary tendency of Italian opera. In Paris, as elsewhere, during the first quarter of the 19th century Italian influences were very powerful; Rossini’s works and those of his imitators had the undesirable effect of reviving in a modernized form the conventionalized opera of the 18th century, the chief object of which was the display of the singer. The Opéra Comique, though limited to the lighter phases of the drama, performed a service of no small value in upholding a standard of legitimate musical expression at a time when the allurements of florid song were obscuring the dramatic ideals which Gluck had established at the cost of so much labor and effort. =Grand Opéra=.—About the same time, important changes were impending in Grand Opéra, though these were more in the nature of a development from the type founded by Lully and afterward enlarged by Rameau, Gluck and Spontini than a revolution such as Weber and his followers had effected in Germany. They were, however, the outcome of the same romantic influences modified by the characteristic French adherence to established form. A grand opera according to tradition must have five acts, consisting of arias, ensembles, choruses, etc., connected by recitatives, with a ballet in one or two of the middle acts, generally the second and fourth.