It is probable, however, that he reflected longer than people have hitherto given him credit for, on the transformation which he allowed to operate in his talent, for it was not until he had spent several years in Italy, that is to say in 1818, that he appeared to the public of that country for the first time. With his calm and meditative mind, with his studious and persevering nature, we may suppose that he employed his time in working silently, in solitude, to modify his style, to acquire the assurance which he lacked, to give elegance and facility to the forms of his melody, without compromising thereby the sentiment of a rich and abundant harmony, the beauties of an original and vigorous instrumentation. It was not, then, until after this complete remodelling of his early education, this training of his faculties, that he decided to brave the stage anew, and to solicit the approbation of a public to whom he was quite unknown. If this Italian career of Meyerbeer, of which I am about to give a brief review, offers only a secondary interest from the standpoint of the value of his works, it offers a very great one as a transitional stage, covering as it does the period of the development of his genius, and the evolution by which he was preparing himself for the great masterpieces with which he was to endow the French lyric stage, those masterpieces which were to seal his glory and render his fame universal. [Illustration: CARICATURE OF MEYERBEER. From collection of prints at the Paris Opera.] It was at Padua, July 10, 1818, that he gave his first Italian opera, _Romilda e Costanza_, the principal rôle of which was written for Pisaroni, one of the most illustrious _cantatrices_ of that period. From the very first performance the opera was a great success, and he immediately wrote another work, _Semiramide riconosciuta_, on an ancient poem of Métastasio, which he brought out at the Royal Theatre at Turin in 1819. The following year he gave to the San Benedetto Theatre of Venice, his third opera, _Emma di Resburgo_, which met with enthusiastic success at a moment when, on this very stage, Rossini had just triumphed with his _Edouardo e Christina_. This work fully established his reputation in Italy, all the great cities esteemed it an honor to present him to their public, and everywhere he obtained the most complete success. This was not all. The Germans themselves, who made a point of disparaging Italian music, made two translations of this opera; one of them, _Emma von Leicester_, was played at Vienna, Dresden, Munich and Frankfort; the other, _Emma von Roxburg_, was performed at Berlin and Stuttgart. It may be well to recall here that the subject of this work was borrowed from the French opera _Héléna_, by Méhul.