If we turn for a moment to the dramatic composition of other composers we shall see how entirely they are at their best when their works are inspired by the ideal, “das rein-menschliche.” That is where the great oratorios derive their glory. They are the musical expression of the loftiest thoughts of which man’s soul is capable; that is why such a masterpiece as the opening recitative of Handel’s _Messiah_ cries directly to the soul—no one who once heard Sims Reeves deliver the great message of comfort could ever forget it. To go to the opposite pole of music, the brightest comic opera that ever was produced was surely Rossini’s _Barbiere_. I am old enough to have heard it sung by the greatest cast that could be imagined—Bosio as Rosina, Mario Almaviva, the grand old Lablache as Dottor Bartolo, Ronconi the barber, Tagliafico Don Basilio. Rendered by such incomparable singers and actors, the whole opera sparkled from the first bar to the finale. But what took one out of one’s self was Don Basilio’s _La Calunnia_, a piece of almost Wagnerian declamation. Calumny is “purely human,” indeed a human monopoly, for animals do not traduce one another, and as Tagliafico, a great artist, told the tale, the effect was electric. The trivial and commonplace but quite delightful prettiness of the rest was forgotten in the presence of a great dramatic effect. It would be easy to multiply instances, but these two suffice to show the overwhelming power of music to express the ideal. A main difference between Wagner’s Tone-Drama and what we have known as “opera” lies in the union of the Tone-Poem with the Word-Poem as two sisters of equal rank, each prepared as the occasion requires it to give precedence to the other. In the so-called opera the music is everything; the book may be, and often is, the merest balderdash, void of all literary or poetic worth. In what Wagner calls “the art work of the future,” the music, as he himself puts it, “has to take up a quite different position; it is only where the music is the predominant partner that it may unfold itself to its full breadth; but, on the other hand, wherever dramatic speech is the most important, there the music must absolutely subordinate itself to it. But it so happens that music has the capability, without being altogether silent, of so imperceptibly effacing itself before language that is teeming with thought, as to make it appear that that alone is of importance and yet to continue giving it support.” It must be evident that this perfect accord between the poem and the music is one of the secrets of the incomparable dignity of Wagner’s work. The recognition of the equal value of both precludes the infusion of anything mean or trivial into either. Here again we may bring into comparison the oratorio, in which the music is wedded to the glorious language of the Bible.