The other obstacle alluded to--the love of colorature song--is a thing that will cure itself with the advance of musical culture. The Germans and the French have long since turned their backs on the florid variety of vocalists, and the Italians are now following suit. An eminent Italian teacher in New York, who has made a specialty of teaching trills and runs and roulades and other vocal circus tricks, lately declared that he was tired of this style of singing, and began to prefer a more simple and dramatic style. The same is true of the modern Italian composers. It is well known that Boito, Ponchielli, and Verdi in his latest operas, approximate the German style; and their admirers will doubtless ere long adapt their taste to this change. Nevertheless, there are not a few remaining who look upon opera as a sort of vocal acrobatics. They go once or twice to the Metropolitan, and feel defrauded of their money if the prima donna fails to come forward to the prompter's box to run up some breakneck scales, and, having arrived at the top, descend by means of a chain of trills or series of somersaults. Their interest in music is _athletic_ (feats of skill), not _aesthetic_ (artistic expression of emotions). Yet these people have the impudence to say that German opera is "stupid," forgetting that their case might be analogous to that of the drunkard who thinks the earth is reeling when he is. This class of opera-goers never tire of abusing such singers as Fraeulein Brandt and Herr Niemann because their voices are no longer as mellow as in their youth, and sometimes weaken in a sustained note or swerve for a second from the pitch. Such blemishes are no doubt to be regretted, but they are a hundred times atoned for by the passion and the variety of emotional expression that animate their voices, and by their superb acting. Fraeulein Brandt's _Ortrud_, _Eglantine_, and _Fides_ will be referred to generations hence as models, as will Herr Niemann's _Tannhaeuser_, _Siegmund_, _Cortez_, _Lohengrin_, _Tristan_, etc. New Yorkers must consider themselves fortunate in having heard for two seasons the greatest of Wagnerian tenors--even though he is no longer in his prime--the man who sang the title _role_ of "Tannhaeuser" when that opera was produced in Paris in 1861; who created the part of _Siegmund_ in 1876 at Bayreuth; and who, in his way, has done as much to popularize Wagner's operas as Liszt did during the Weimar period, when people had to go to that city to hear "Lohengrin" and "Tannhaeuser," as they now go to Bayreuth to hear "Parsifal." He is not only valuable for the sake of his artistic qualities, but because of his enthusiasm for the cause of the best music. Wagner held him in the highest esteem; and he wrote in his review of the Bayreuth festival of 1876, that without Niemann's devotion and ardor its success would not have been assured. He regretted subsequently that he did not ask Niemann to create the