These problems may be broadly summarized in the statement that the serious music drama has shown signs of becoming popular only in recent years. A certain portion of the public has always shown interest and enthusiasm for opera, to be sure, and such a public has always existed; however, there are signs that it has grown both larger and more adept through the influence of radio programs, concert performances, and other forces to be discussed later. Of late, it has become customary to devote a concert to the partial or complete performance of an operatic work rarely heard in the theater in the United States, and still more recently this practice has been extended to the performance of works even from the standard repertory. Significant events were the concert renditions, by Mitropoulos in New York, of Strauss’s _Elektra_, Berg’s _Wozzeck_, and Schönberg’s _Erwartung_; and, by Monteux in San Francisco, of Debussy’s _Pelléas et Mélisande_ and Gluck’s _Orfeo_. The results were not equally successful; while _Elektra_ achieved rare acclamation in New York, the success of _Pelléas_ in San Francisco was less conspicuous, as those who know the opera well will readily understand. But the fact that such performances are in fashion is evidence that there is still need for them at this point in our music life, and the enthusiasm for them is evidence that a public stands ready to embrace something other than the standard fare ordinarily offered by our established operatic institutions. This is only one of many symptoms of the situation. Many enterprises throughout the country have sprung up during the last twenty or twenty-five years which show that a public for opera is developing; only the means of satisfying it is lacking.