Verdi had a keen dramatic vision and assigned greater importance to the orchestra than his Italian predecessors. There is an absence, for the most part, of set airs, and there is a continuity of musical structure. The orchestration is wonderful, but the voice still remains the centre of the musical system. The style is more that of Donizetti's than Bellini's, although critics declare the music of "Ernani" noisy and commonplace, with too much brass in the orchestra. His chorus was written in unison, and passed too abruptly from one piece to another, and his effects were not sufficiently prepared, but under his direction the brassiness was kept down, and a proper balance maintained. There is genuine emotion in his strains, significance in his melodies, characterization of personages and forcible construction of scenes, though he did not surpass "William Tell". He neglected concerted music and does not include one separate regularly constructed piece. His solo melodies are beautiful. His "Aida" is saturated with local color, Egyptian music, with a masterly combination of strings, woodwind and voice. "Il Trovatore" is not an opera but a set of detached pieces held in loose contact on a string. There was little action and we find page after page to be sung at the footlights with only mechanical gestures. Verdi avoided the "leitmotiv", and relegated mere tune to the background. In "Falstaff" there is a complete independence of restrictive formalism that modern music drama requires to illustrate the play, which enhances the significance of the situations. V. POST WAGNERIAN SCHOOL--INCLUDING MODERN RUSSIAN, FRENCH, ITALIAN, GERMAN, AND AMERICAN COMPOSERS. Michael Ivanovitch Glinka is called the "Father of Russian Opera". He combined the technique, forms and counterpoint of Italy and Germany with the Russian folksong and rythm. He was choice of his subjects, and thought that the management of the plots ought to be more simple, and the music in the style of natural song. There is energy and also vitality in "La Vie pour le Tsar" and "Russlau et Ludmille". In Russian folk songs we find the music suitable to the words. The Russian folk like acting and their customs in their wedding ceremonies, etc., are an ideal basis for an opera school. Glinka used the fierce struggle of the contending nations for a background, and let the story be related and enacted by four central figures. His realism surpassed the trivial impossibilities of the Italian school. He did not combine involved themes in a pot-pourri style so that none could be distinguished, but rather created atmosphere. His instrumentalism is sonorous and uses five-four, six-four and seven-four time.