the singer who could perfectly present Donna Anna would be worthy to sing Handel’s song, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” From one extreme we pass to its opposite. In strongest possible contrast with the high moral passion of this last, is what now follows. We have a song embodying the very frenzied acme of Don Juan’s zest of sensual pleasure. He directs Leporello about the feast, and trolls off, like one possessed, his famous champagne song, _Finch’an del vino_, whose rapidity and glorious _abandon_ are too much for almost all the baritones; those, in whose dragging utterance it does not become commonplace, are apt to give it with a swaggering glibness, and a coarseness that has nothing of the fine champagne enthusiasm about it. In this song and that last of Donna Anna’s the two electric poles, as it were, of the whole play, have met. And now for the pretty episode of peasant life again; the inimitably sweet, insinuating, loving song in which repentant little Zerlina seems to invite chastisement from her offended, jealous lover, _Batti, batti, O bell’ Masetto_, (beat me, beat me, dear Masetto!). With what soft tendrils of melody, enhanced by the delicious instrumentation, she steals around his senses and his heart! And to what unaffected rapture (to say nothing of a little coquettish triumph) the strain changes when he forgives her, as she knew he would! This seems a very simple song, but it is the perfection of art. O that Mozart could go into ecstasies with his own pet Zerlina, hearing Bosio sing this!