The lovers of vocal tight-rope dancing and threadbare orchestral accompaniments who insist that Wagner is merely a fashion, and that ere long there will be a return to the saccharine melodies of Rossini and Bellini, show thereby that they have never studied the history of the opera. This history teaches a curious lesson, viz., that operas which had a great vogue at one time and subsequently lost their popularity can _never_ be galvanized into real life again. What has become of the threescore and more operas of Donizetti, and the forty of Rossini--some of which for years monopolized the stage so completely the world over that Weber and Beethoven were ignored even in Vienna and the German capitals? They are dead, and all efforts to revive them have been futile. These operas had sprung into _sudden_ popularity, whereas "Fidelio," "Euryanthe," "Lohengrin," and "Tannhaeuser," which for years had to fight for every inch of ground, are now masters of the situation, and gaining in popularity every year. And this brings us to the second lesson taught by the history of the opera--that the works that thus had to _fight_ their way into the hearts of the public are the immortal operas that are sure to gain more and more favor as years go by. Moreover, the statistics of German opera-houses show that Wagner's operas, from the "Flying Dutchman" to the "Nibelung's Ring," have been gaining in popularity and frequency of repetition, year by year, with a constancy that might almost be expressed with mathematical exactness by means of a _crescendo_: <. And we are by no means at the biggest end of the _crescendo_ yet. For there are scores of cities where Wagner would be even more popular than he is, were it not for the woful rarity of competent dramatic singers and conductors. There is, therefore, no hope for the _Italianissimi_, who sigh for their maccaroni arias and their "Ernani" and "Gazza Ladra" soup. Italian opera has ceased to exist in New York, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, and even in Italy dramatic music of the modern school is gradually driving out the old-fashioned lyric and florid opera. In New York, moreover, the press is almost unanimous in favor of German opera, and the press, as a rule, is omnipotent in theatrical matters. I am convinced, for instance, that one of the principal reasons why Wagner was more rapidly acclimated in New York than in the German capitals is that most of the leading German critics are old men--too old to submit readily to Wagner's revolutionary tendencies; whereas in New York all the critics are young men, who only needed to hear a few good performances of Wagner's operas to be filled with an enthusiasm for them, with which many of their readers could not help being infected.