I have referred to these various inconsistencies and absurdities of opera, not with the idea of making out a case against it; on the contrary, I want to make out a case for it. This obviously can be done only by means of operas which are guiltless of absurdities and of melodramatic exaggeration, which answer the requirements of artistic reasonableness, and are, at the same time, beautiful. This cannot be said of “Cavalleria Rusticana” (Rustic Chivalry--Heaven save the mark!), “La Bohème,” “La Tosca,” “The Girl of the Golden West,” “Thaïs” (poison, infidelity, suicide, sorcery, and religion mixed up in an intolerable _mélange_), “Contes d’Hoffman” (a Don Juan telling his adventures in detail)--these are bad art, not because they are immoral, but because they are untrue, distorted, without sense of the value of the material they employ. Operas which are both beautiful and reasonable do exist, and one or two of them are actually in our present-day repertoire. The questions we have to ask are these: Can a highly imaginative and significant drama, in which action and reflection hold a proper balance, in which some great and moving passion or some elemental human motives find true dramatic expression--can such a drama exist as opera? Is it possible to preserve the body and the spirit of drama and at the same time to preserve the body and spirit of music? Does not one of these have to give way to the other? We want opera to be one thing, and not several. We want the same unity which exists in other artistic forms. We want to separate classic, romantic, and realistic. If opera changes from blank verse to rhymed verse, so to speak, we want the change to be dictated by an artistic necessity as it is in “As You Like It.” We want, above all, such a reasonable correspondence between seeing and hearing as shall make it possible for us to preserve each sense unimpaired by the other. A few such operas have been composed. A considerable number approach this ideal. From Gluck’s “Orfeo” (produced in 1762) to Wagner’s “Tristan” (1865) the pure conception of opera has always been kept alive. Gluck, Mozart, Weber, Wagner, and Verdi are the great names that stand out above the general level. Gluck’s “Orfeo” is even more interesting since the dark shadow of Strauss’s “Electra” has appeared to throw it into relief. Once in a decade or two “Orfeo” is revived to reveal anew how nobly Gluck interpreted the old Greek story. And it must be remembered that Gluck lived in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when music was quite inflexible in the matter of those dissonances which are considered by modern composers absolutely necessary to the expression of dramatic passion.