Verdi was accused of imitating Wagner in both "Aïda" and "Otello," chiefly because he modified and afterward abandoned the recognized forms of the Italian school. The charge cannot be sustained. Verdi has never for an instant sacrificed his individuality, and his music is as purely and intensely Italian as Wagner's is German. The same charge was made against Gounod when he wrote "Romeo et Juliette," a thoroughly French work. Verdi in these operas was simply following the dictates of his mature genius, which was leading him toward one of the most significant developments of our time. He was struggling to adapt to the fundamental theories of opera, as expounded by its founders, Rinuccini and Peri, the vast and complicated materials of modern musical expression. In "Aïda" he endeavored to reconcile the formulæ of the Neapolitan school with the esthetic principles of the Greek drama and approached as closely to complete success as the opposing nature of the two chief elements would permit. In "Otello" he confessed the unsuitability of the Neapolitan forms to the full and detailed union of text and music. He preserved the Italian beauty of the vocal part of opera, constructed it with a consistent, determined, and generally successful attempt at organic union with the text, and so produced an opera which will, I believe, live. That he was wholly uninfluenced by Wagner's style, though he was attentive to Wagner's proclamations of the true theory of dramatic composition, is demonstrated by "Otello," and still more conclusively by his last work, "Falstaff," which is as far away from Wagner's style as is Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro," and yet which is built on precisely the same dramatic principles as Wagner's "Die Meistersinger."