_La Sonnambula_, in which the singer Pasta created the title rôle, is an admirable example of Bellini in his most tender and idyllic mood. A graceful melodiousness fills the score and the closing scene attains genuine sincerity and pathos. _Norma_ (Milan, 1831), set to a strong and moving libretto by the poet Felice Romani, is a tragedy of Druidic Britain, and in it the composer may be considered to have reached his highest level. At a time like the present, when the art of singing is not cultivated to the pitch of perfection that was the standard in the composer’s own period, a modern rendering of _Norma_, for instance, is apt to lose in dramatic intensity, since Bellini and the other followers of Rossini were content to provide a rich, broad flow of _cantilena_ melody, leaving it to the singers to infuse in it dramatic force and meaning--something which Tamburini, Rubini, and other great Italian singers were well able to do. _Norma_ surpasses _I Puritani_ in the real beauty and force of its libretto, and gains thereby in musical consistency; but the latter opera, which shows French influences to some extent, cannot be excelled as regards the tender pathos and sweet sincerity of its melodies, which, like those in the composer’s other works, depend on _bel canto_ for their effect. Triumphantly successful at the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris, 1834, this last of Bellini’s works may well have been that of which Wagner wrote: ‘I shall never forget the impression made upon me by an opera of Bellini at a period when I was completely exhausted with the everlasting abstract complication used in our orchestras, when a simple and noble melody was revealed to me anew.’ In a manner Bellini may be considered a link between the exuberant force and consummate _savoir-faire_ of Rossini’s French period and the more earnest earlier efforts of Verdi. Though Donizetti and Bellini are the leading figures in the group of composers identified with Rossini’s operatic reforms, a few other names call for mention here: Saverio Mercadante, who composed both _opera seria_ and _opera buffa_--a gifted but careless writer whose best-known work is the tragic opera _Il Giuramento_ (Milan, 1837); Giovanni Pacini, whose _Safo_, a direct imitation of Rossini, was most successful; and Niccolò Vaccai, better known for his vocal exercises--still in general use--than for his once popular opera _Giuletta e Romeo_ (Milan, 1825). Meyerbeer’s seven Italian operas, _Romilda e Constanza_, _Semiramide riconosciuta_, _Eduardo e Christina_, _Emma di Resburgo_, _Margherita di Anjou_, _L’Esule di Granata_, and _Il Crociato in Egitto_, which were due directly to the admiration he had conceived for Rossini in 1815, and of which he afterward repented, also properly belong in this enumeration. III