But in whatever way we view an opera, mere orchestral fulness will not serve to land the work very high up in the esteem of music lovers. Nor will the purely beautiful in music--melody worked out with transparent clearness of form--save a poor, unconvincing or uninteresting dramatic fabric from passing into the great storehouse of the unacted. Puccini's music is dramatic, and by far the greater part of it, by a sort of quick natural instinct, is purely of the theatre. His first and most direct appeal is by the charm and vitality of the vocal expression, while his whole plan is one of movement. From the first--if we except for the moment his _Le Villi_, which was first called a ballet-opera--he called his operas _Dramma per lyrica_--lyric dramas, a term first established, and moulded into a definite art-form, by Wagner. With his first opera, Puccini started something of a new form in the short opera; and two remarkable works of the kind in _Cavalleria Rusticana_ by Mascagni and _I Pagliacci_ by Leoncavallo, which came very soon after, clearly indicate that he had founded a school as it were; and so from Italy to-day, as in times past, this particular fashion spread to other countries. Puccini, still exhibiting, with a strong and in many ways typical national feeling, spontaneous vocal melody as his leading characteristic, did not limit himself to the perfection of the short opera. His subsequent works were of larger calibre. He left the fanciful and imaginative and the old world legends, and turned to everyday life for his subjects. In general form--for one must revert to this not particularly lucid description when dealing with opera--Puccini must be placed among the shining lights who have chosen to deal with what may be called light opera. _Opéra comique_, as translated by our term "comic opera," means something so entirely different, that although "light opera" is but a poor expression, it is one that may perhaps be most readily "understanded of the people."