We now turn to the performance. This took place on the 12th of July, 1782. It seemed as if the applause of the crowded house would never cease. The audience was surprised, charmed, and carried away by the beauty and euphony of the music--music full to overflowing with life, and which did not sacrifice nobility of form to truth of portraiture, nor depend for its seductive power on glittering dialogue. Performance followed performance in quick succession, and this spite of the fact that intrigue in theatrical circles labored strenuously to prevent its repetition. The Italians, with Salieri at their head, looked with displeasure at the rise of the German operatic stage. It disturbed them, and threatened to do away with their exclusive rule. They went so far even as to entice the performers away so that the presentation of the opera became very difficult; whereupon Mozart writes: “I was in such a rage that I did not know myself.” But they could not prevent the audience’s crying bravo! and Mozart himself says: “It does one good to get such applause.” The “Elopement” is the first link in the unbroken chain of effects and triumphs which ends in the dramatic production of our days, confined to no one nation--a production destined, in a generation, to rule Europe more powerfully than did the Italian opera in those days, and which even now succeeded in impeding the success of this first German opera and banishing it from the stage. This actually happened, and the emperor Joseph was weak enough to allow the Italian school to obtain the upperhand to such an extent that Mozart himself could not help joining in the chorus of those priests of Bacchus; but then he gave that chorus a beauty and fullness which it had not possessed before. This result was attained in the _Figaro_, of which we shall speak next.