Servilia's air (2) indicated, after the old style, with tempo di menuetto, the two airs for Annius (13, 17)[49] and that for Publius (16), are all both in design and treatment proper to secondary parts, without musical significance or individual characterisation. The main weight, therefore, fell according to custom upon the two prime donne, who played Sextus and Vitellia. The fact that the parts of the lovers, Sextus and Annius, were soprano, was an objectionable relic of the old opera seria, and that Sextus should have been played by a female and not a male soprano was a progress indeed for humanity, but not for the drama. True characterisation is impossible when a woman in man's clothes plays the lover, and the case is not improved by the weak, womanish character of Sextus. His passion for Vitellia becomes a thing contrary to nature, and the deeper the dramatic conception of the part the more repulsively does this appear. Of necessity, therefore, vocal execution comes to the foreground. The first air of Sextus, "Parto I" (9), fails at once in dramatic interest from his having already repeatedly assured Vitellia of his blind obedience, if she will only bestow upon {TITUS--SEXTUS.} (295) him one glance of love. The musical design and working-out are those of a grand bravura air. Tenderness, tinged with only an occasional dash of heroism, prevails throughout the two movements (adagio 3-4 and allegro 4-4). An obbligato clarinet goes with the voice, and the strictly concertante treatment of this instrument gives its chief interest to the musical working-out of the song. Considered as a concert air which treats the given situation only as a general foundation for the development of musical forces, it is of extraordinary beauty, the melodies being noble and expressive, the sound-effects of the voice and clarinet admirable, and the only concessions to brilliancy of effect the triplet passages and the long-drawn-out conclusion.