The opera, so far as a natural origin can be claimed for it at all, proceeds from the sacred musical plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as the modern drama proceeds from the so-called mysteries of the same period. Indeed the earliest musical dramas of modern Italy, from which the opera of the present day is directly descended, were mysteries differing only from the dramatic mysteries in having been written for the singing, not for the speaking voice. The opera, or drama in music, is not, compared with the spoken drama, a very ancient form of art. Persons afflicted with a rage for seeking in the distant past traces and origins of a form of art which was created and forced into existence in comparatively modern times, see the first specimens of opera in the Greek plays; a view which will be worth considering when writers on the subject of Greek music have come to an understanding as to its exact nature. One thing is quite certain, that the Greek plays are remembered solely by what musicians call the "words," whereas, with the exception of Herr Wagner's highly poetical, highly dramatic works, there are no operas written to be performed throughout in music, which, by their words alone, would have the least chance of living. Nor did the musical mysteries or musical plays of the fifteenth century--which were partly declaimed, partly sung, and always by solo voices--bear any great resemblance to the grand operas of the present day with their airs, duets, concerted pieces, and elaborate dramatic finales, supported by an orchestra which is always being varied and reinforced through the addition of new instruments, and in which composers aim constantly at the formation of new instrumental combinations. Of course, too, the sacred musical plays of the fifteenth century differed from our modern operas by their subjects. A primitive sort of opera on the _Conversion of St. Paul_, which was performed throughout in music at Rome in 1440, is not the sort of work that would be likely to interest our modern audiences, who entertain a marked preference for operas in which a leading part is assigned to the prima donna, and who have no objection to the prima donna's representing a thoroughly mundane character, such as the fascinating Carmen, in the late M. Bizet's opera of that name, or the less fascinating Violetta, in Verdi's _Traviata_.