Gluck's immediate influence was confined to French opera, and it is because of this that I have placed him in the history of opera in France. He seems to have had absolutely no effect on Italian opera. Less than thirty years after his death all Europe was whistling or strumming "Di tanti palpiti." On French opera, however, the influence of Gluck was permanent. He fastened upon it the sound traditions of Rameau, and he pointed out the true path of progress. That his immediate successors so frequently mistook the means for the end, and became merely prosy and prolix where he was simple and chaste, or in their endeavors to avoid this fate fell into pretentious bombast, was due to the fact that Gluck was unquestionably ahead of his time. In his attempts to put his theories into practice he himself was hampered by the incomplete development of musical material in his day. We find him constantly struggling for full dramatic expression and missing it because he had not the later composer's palette of color at his command. His imitators, less gifted than he and moved less by unyielding artistic convictions than by the desire to gain general approval, could hardly be expected to equal him. It was not till French opera had reached the period in which its composers by the study of the works of German and Italian masters had formulated an eclectic system of expression that it was able to take its place in the high seat of dramatic art. Yet one seeks in vain through the contents of French musical drama for any works which are so pure in their attempt at dramatic sincerity as those of Gluck.