Modern opera can be dated from _Der Freischütz_. Yet it goes without saying (since nothing is quite new under the sun) that the work was not as novel in its day as it seems to us after the lapse of nearly a century. The elements of romanticism had existed in opera long before Weber’s time. In Gluck’s ‘Armide’ the voluptuous adventures of Rinaldo in the enchantress’s garden had breathed the spirit of the German folk-lore awakening, though treated in Gluck’s style of classical purity. Mozart, especially, must be counted among the romanticists of opera. The final scene of _Don Giovanni_, with its imaginative playing with the supernatural, to the accompaniment of most impressive music, seems to be a sketch in preparation for _Freischütz_. And the spirit of German song had already entered into opera in ‘The Magic Flute,’ which is in great part as truly German as Weber, except for its Italian grace and delicacy of treatment. Moreover, ‘The Magic Flute’ was a _singspiel_, or dramatic work with music interspersed with spoken text--the form in which _Der Freischütz_ was written. Mozart’s opera might have founded the German school, had conditions been different, but beyond the fact that the story is obscure and distinctly not national, the German national movement had not yet begun. We have seen in a previous chapter how it took repeated invasions and insults from Napoleon to arouse patriotism throughout the disjointed German lands, and how the patriotic spirit had to fight the repression of the courts at every turn. We have seen how it was hounded from the streets to the cellars and how from beneath ground it cried for some work of art which should symbolize and express its aspiration while it was in hiding. It was this conjunction of conditions which gave _Freischütz_ such peculiar popularity at the time--a popularity, however, which was fully justified by its artistic value and could not have been achieved in such overwhelming degree without it.