He is best known for his opera _Samson and Delilah_ which is carried into fame by the two arias, _My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice_ and _Love Come to My Aid_. This last is of the finest lyric writing in French opera and the first is surpassingly emotional. The choral parts (often sounding like early Hebrew music) show a real master at work, and the effect of the whole is very dramatic, whether sung as oratorio or opera. It is not as an opera writer, however, that Saint-Saëns wished to go down to history for he threw his whole strength into trying to make the French public know and love the classics. Paul Landormy says: “From the historic point of view, Saint-Saëns is a notable figure. Saint-Saëns is the French Mendelssohn.... He undertook the musical education of France at the exact moment when Berlioz despaired of succeeding with the task, and he prepared the public for the great French School of symphonists which arose toward the end of the 19th century.” In 1871 Saint-Saëns was made president of the newly formed National Society of Music of which you will read later. The ballet was used to advantage by Clement Philibert Léo Délibes (1836–1891) a master of this form of music and dance. He built up a certain atmosphere that is particularly French. His ballets, _Coppelia_ and _Sylvia_ and his opera _Lakmé_ are conventional and very popular. _Lakmé_ is _opéra comique_ because of the spoken words and of its romantic character. Délibes always has a certain delicacy of color, and charm which captivates. Another composer who writes in an exotic vein (or an out-of-the-nation-to-which-he-belongs way, with all the color of the other nation in costumes and scenes) is Edouard Victor Antoine Lalo (1823–1892). Lalo was trained to sincerity by his models, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. This does not mean copying, for his music is not anything like the music of these men. He skilfully drew a variety of effects from his orchestration, and his music has individuality. His best known work in opera is _Le Roi d’Ys_. He also wrote a work for violin and orchestra _Symphonie Espagnole_ which is a pet of all the violinists because of its brilliancy and beauty. MASSENET Jules Massenet (1842–1912) was something like a modern French Meyerbeer and an Offenbach combined, yet his work is far more worth while. Before he died he was at the height of his popularity in Europe and America, and the repertory of the Hammerstein Opera in New York included many of Massenet’s works. He composed operas so rapidly that his public could not forget him! He built on Gounod and Ambroise Thomas and gained much from Wagner. He used continuous melody and some of the principles of the leit-motif. Wagner’s music compared to Massenet’s was thick for Massenet’s is thin!