children. One must make his appearance upon a horse; another insisted on descending from a mountain; another would not sing unless his plume was five feet in length. The moment they finished their airs, they left the stage, or remained upon it sucking oranges or drinking wine. They made their demands on the composer; he was obliged to write a bravura aria, or an air _di portamento_ with perhaps a trumpet obligato, according to their caprice. They robbed their associates of their airs if they saw a possible distribution of glory. The chief singer and the composer between them made the opera, for there was but little ensemble work. The custom was to finish the second act with a duet between the castrate and the first soprano; to end the third by a terzetto in which the first tenor was admitted. Grétry tells us that during the seven or eight years he lived in Rome, he never saw a serious opera succeed. "If the theatre was crowded, it was to hear a certain singer; and when the singer left the stage, the people in the boxes played cards or ate ices, and the people in the parterre yawned." And Voltaire summed up the whole matter when he wrote M. de Cideville (1752) that "the opera is a public rendezvous where people meet on certain days without knowing why; it is a house which is frequented by everybody, although the master is freely cursed and the crowd bored." [Illustration: PRIZE MODEL FOR NEW MONUMENT TO MOZART IN VIENNA. Reproduced from a photograph.] It was different in _opera buffa_. In this species of opera the virtuosos were not so powerful as the poet and the composer. The castrate could not afford to waste his time in consorting with the "_bouffons_," and so his place was taken by the tenor, who became the passionate lover. In like manner the _prima donna_, was paid such a small sum that the manager was obliged to look for women of ambition and dramatic talent instead of acknowledged vocal skill. The _basso_ was admitted to the company, and here was the foundation of an ensemble impossible in grand opera. The _opera seria_ remained in its conventional or ideal world; the _opera buffa_ was concerned with subjects of everyday life. The former clung to history or legend; the latter delighted in appealing to the life of the people. The composer was allowed more liberty. He was not confined to the _da capo_ air, composed of two parts with the invariable repetition of the first; he could use the rondo, where the chief melody appears after each secondary theme; or the cavatina, with one movement; or the chanson with its simple couplet; in other words, he could better suit the dramatic action. He wrote duets, trios, quartets of importance, and gradually the finale was developed. So too the orchestra, which had been subordinated to the imperious singer in _opera seria_, found its voice, and even sang in passages where the text demanded of the singer a rapid delivery that was almost dramatic speech. The _opera buffa_ rapidly grew in public favor,