Zaide lays no claim to anything but a certain amount of fluency. The part of the Sultan requires a strong penetrating voice, but for the rest the requirements of the music are well within the compass of ordinary theatrical singers; musical feeling, and a natural, correct judgment Mozart always displays, because they were in fact a part of himself which could not be laid aside. In the construction of the songs the traditional arrangement of the Italian aria is not closely adhered to. An effort is evident to make use of the fundamental law requiring contrasting motifs to be compacted into a whole, in developing the individuality of the characters and of the dramatic situations. Nevertheless, the influence of the old tradition is visible in many phenomena, such as the change of tempo, the long ritomelli, the division of the different motifs by regular rests, and their amplification. Yet it is no longer servile obedience to an external type, but an evident determination to evolve the form out of the given situation. Every artist, no matter how many-sided his genius, feels his nature impelled in a certain direction in which his creative strength works freely and independently, while other paths remain strange to him or are altogether closed. Experience and cultivation go far to equalise his powers, but they are powerless to alter the original impulse. Now dramatic representation makes demands upon the artist for the satisfaction of which he must not indeed overstep the bounds of his individuality--that no man can do with impunity--but he must stretch them to their extremest limits. Here it is that he seeks aid from the poet. The latter can elevate the musician by the strength and vividness of his situation and characters, by the style and vigour of his language, while it needs but little to stimulate his musical production to activity. This aid was denied to Mozart when as a young man he first sought to write dramatic music in its true sense. The first act of the opera before us has no events except the love passages between Gomaz and Zaide, which take their peculiar tone from the mixture of pity for suffering innocence and from the danger threatening in the background. Here Mozart is quite in his element. The {COURT SERVICE IN SALZBURG.} (118) tendency and fervour of his own sentiments are involuntarily expressed; but, graceful and interesting as is this first act, the poetical expression of the words discovers nothing of the more delicate features of the music. Again, in the second act, the Sultan raging in jealousy, Zaide at first beseeching, then also furious, Alazim moralising--these are elements in the treatment of which Mozart might well look for aid from the poet. And here it was that the poet left him in the lurch altogether. We fancy ourselves in a marionette-show when the Sultan sings:--