cultivation equal to that of the oratorio and church music. The experiment of a permanent theatre was first made at Hamburg in 1678. The determined zeal of Gerhard Schott, an influential jurist of that city, made the attempt successful, and as long as he lived the opera did not lack encouragement. This period embraces over sixty years. The first performance at this theatre was a musical play by Johann Theile (1646–1724), who had been under the instruction of Schütz in Weissenfels and a former choir-master in Gottorp. This sacred, allegorical work was succeeded by a number of similar pieces by the same composer. Other successful masters of the same period were Franck, Strungk, the celebrated violinist; also Förtsche, Conradi and Kusser. The last-mentioned composer was appointed conductor in 1693, and was a worthy forerunner of Keiser. [Illustration: HEINRICH SCHÜTZ ] Reinhard Keiser was twenty-one years old when, in 1694, he was appointed director of the Hamburg opera. He was a man of undoubted genius. His productivity as a composer was immense. His works number about one hundred and twenty operas, many of which contain, in addition to choruses, recitatives, etc., no less than forty airs. In all his serious operas there was no spoken dialogue. His works were very popular throughout Germany. His activity was not confined to the stage, for he composed church music, passion music and cantatas. He had a rare and seemingly inexhaustible gift of melody, and his recitatives are masterly, but his music lacks the breadth and massive strength of his successor, Handel. “All that Keiser wrote,” says Mattheson, “was uncommonly easy to sing, and was so easily caught by the ear that one enjoys it without feeling any respect or intense admiration for it.” Keiser lacked earnestness, and did not exert an enduring influence for good on the Hamburg opera. He was willing to lend his art to the most trivial and nonsensical farce, in order to afford amusement to the rough and common people. Mattheson compares him with his more earnest contemporary, Rosenmüller, whose sonatas were “like the fresh blue salmon of the Elbe,” while Keiser’s light music was “like the smoked golden herrings of the North Sea, which tickle the palate, but awake a thirst for drink.” In place of the sacred spectacles and plays which at the outset had formed the subject of the drama on the Hamburg stage, in the course of time the gods and heroes of mythology, and vulgar farces, began to divide the attention of the public. The stage spectacle grew more and more sensational. Fireworks, devils, serpents, dragons, battle scenes and all kinds of noises and sights were introduced. Not content with mere humanity on the stage, various animals became personages in the drama, and mingled their outcries with the music of the orchestra. Then again, in some operas, no less than four different languages were spoken and sung indiscriminately; yet in spite of all these absurdities,