But what a music, what a halo of sound Mozart has cast about it all. What are words of the text, after all, especially when we do not understand them? These melodies carry their own message, they _cannot_ be sung without expression, they are expression themselves. Is there in all music a more soul-stirring beauty than that of _Deh vieni non tardar_ (Figaro, Act II), or _In diesen teuren Hallen_ (Magic Flute, Act II)? Or more delicious tenderness than Cherubino’s _Non so più_ and _Voi che sapete_, or Don Giovanni’s serenade _Deh vieni alla fenestra_; or more dashing gallantry than _Fin ch’an dal vino_? Were duets ever written with half the grace of _La ci darem la mano_, in _Don Giovanni_, or the letter scene in _Figaro_? They are jewels that will continue to glow when opera itself is reduced to cinders. The purely musical elements of opera are Mozart’s chief concern. If he gives himself wholly to that without detriment to the drama, it is only by virtue of his own extraordinary power. Mozart could not, like Gluck, make himself ‘forget that he was a musician,’ and would not if he could; yet his scenes _live_, his characters are more real than Gluck’s; all this despite ‘set arias,’ despite coloratura, despite everything that Gluck abolished. But in musical details he followed him; in the portrayal of mood, in painting backgrounds, and in the handling of the chorus. Gluck painted landscape, but Mozart drew portraits. In musical characterization his mastery is undisputed. Again we have no use for words; the musical accents, the contour of the phrase and its rhythm delineate the man more precisely than a sketcher’s pencil. Here once more beauty is the first law, it sheds its evening glow over all. No mere frivolity here, no dissolute roisterers, no faithless wives--Don Giovanni, the gay cavalier, becomes a ‘demon of divine daring,’ the urchin Cherubino is made the incarnation of Youth, Spring, and Love; the Countess personifies the ideal of pure womanhood; Beaumarchais, in short, becomes Mozart.