Gluck, of course, meant for the sake of dramatic effect. His artistic creed, as set forth in this preface, is singularly clear and concentrated. Any one who examines a Gluck opera, or goes to hear his "Orfeo," which is still performed, in the expectation of finding a vast difference in the outward shape from that employed by the Italian opera composers of the time will be disappointed. The ground plan of opera had not been long enough before the world to satisfy serious thinkers that it might beneficially be subjected to a radical reform, a reform tending toward a restoration of the continued recitative of Peri. Opera had to pass through the middle stages of development, in which its forms were perfected and exhausted, before men could discover that as mere forms they were valueless for the purposes of dramatic expression, but that the materials out of which they were made could be utilized. This time has but recently arrived. Gluck was ahead of it. He was not prepared to discern the artificial restraints put upon free expression by the old formulas. And even if he had done so, he could not by any possibility have induced his public to follow him in an overthrow of all that they regarded as a necessary part of opera. Gluck was compelled to use the aria form in his operas, because there was no other definite form in his day, and operatic art was not sufficiently comprehended by the public to admit of the introduction of a new form. The French ballet was a necessary part of his scheme. Even a century later the Parisians refused to accept opera without it. But Gluck restored to the aria its dramatic purpose. In his hands it was no longer a mere show piece for the singer, but a definite, carefully designed, and generally successful embodiment of an emotional state. The famous "Che faro senza Euridice" in his "Orfeo" is an admirable example of the Gluck aria at its best. To be sure, it sounds somewhat placid to us, accustomed as we are to the impassioned and highly colored musical diction of recent composers. But to the French of Gluck's day with their by no means incorrect conception of the purity and dignity of Greek art, which Gluck was trying to imitate, the "grand simplicity" of this style must have been highly influential. Indeed if there is one quality above all others in the music of Gluck's "Orfeo" which strikes the thoughtful listener of to-day, it is its classicism. It is a full and satisfying embodiment of what we believe to have been the Greek art spirit. One can think of Gluck's "Orfeo" as being performed in a Greek theatre of the age of Pericles, and the fancy does not shock the mind.