Mozart replied to his objections: “If I only knew a single note that could be changed! But I have not been as well satisfied with anything in this opera as with the quartet;” and Raaff was himself afterwards, as he said, “agreeably disappointed;” and just as delighted were the four musicians: Wendling, Ramm, Ritter and Lang, who had an _obligato_ accompaniment to the aria of Ilia, in the first act, and who were thus given an opportunity to appreciate Mozart’s skill; for it was the profound rapture that comes from joy and love which was here to be expressed in music. And as Mozart had once given expression to that rapture in his _Non so d’onde viene_, he again gave it a voice in the premature evening of his life in the aria: _Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schoen._[5] The aria of Ilia reminds us of both. But the quartet is the crowning glory of Gluck’s endeavor to allow each singer to express himself, at every moment, as far as possible, in accordance with his own individuality. Even in Mozart’s works, we find little like it; and at that time such musical wealth was entirely new and unheard of. The elector said laughingly, after the thunder-storm in the second act: “One would not think that that small head could carry so much.” And then the choruses, when the people, during the storm, utter their cry of horror! The members of the orchestra said that this chorus could not but freeze the blood in one’s veins. And yet the third act was incomparably richer. Mozart himself says: “There is scarcely a scene which is not exceedingly interesting,” and that “his head and hands were so full of it that it would be no wonder if he were to become the third act himself.” He thinks, however, that it would prove as good as the first two. He says: “but I believe infinitely better, and that it may be said: _Finis coronat opus_ (the end crowns the work).” For the address of the high priest on the sufferings of the people, caused by the sea monster, the solemn march, and the oracle itself, Gluck’s Alceste may have served as a model. The magnitude of these tragic elements at least were well understood; and no one can, even to-day, remain unmoved by these tones. But it became also a school of the genuine dramatic style in music; and the orchestration was the best that Mozart had produced. From it, all who followed him learned the best they knew.