very interesting, there is a sense of effort--_will und kann nicht!_ Truth--above all truth--but we may demand good taste as well." Dargomijsky was no conscious or deliberate imitator of Wagner. The passion for realistic expression which possessed him from the first led him by a parallel but independent path to a goal somewhat similar to that which was reached by Wagner. But Dargomijsky adhered more closely to the way indicated a century earlier by that great musical reformer Gluck. In doing this justice to the Russian composer, a sense of proportion forbids me to draw further analogies between the two men. Dargomijsky was a strong and original genius, who would have found his way to a reformed music drama, even if Wagner had not existed. Had he been sustained by a Ludwig of Bavaria, instead of being opposed by a Gedeonov, he might have left his country a larger legacy from his abundant inspiration; but fate and his surroundings willed that his achievements should be comparatively small. Whereas Wagner, moving on from strength to strength, from triumph to triumph, raised up incontestable witnesses to the greatness of his genius. In _The Stone Guest_ Dargomijsky has been successful in welding words and music into an organic whole; while the music allotted to each individual in the opera seems to fit like a skin. "Poetry, love, passion, arresting tragedy, humour, subtle psychological sense and imaginative treatment of the supernatural,[15] all these qualities," says Stassov, "are combined in this opera." The chief drawback of the work is probably its lack of scenic interest, a fault which inevitably results from the unity of its construction. The music, thoughtful, penetrative, and emotional, is of the kind which loses little by the absence of scenic setting. _The Stone Guest_ is essentially an opera which may be studied at the piano. It unites as within a focus many of the dominant ideas and tendencies of the school that proceeded from Glinka and Dargomijsky, and proves that neither nationality of subject nor of melody constitutes nationality of style, and that a tale which bears the stamp and colour of the South may become completely Russian, poetically and musically, when moulded by Russian hands. _The Stone Guest_ has never attained to any considerable measure of popularity in Russia. In spite of Dargomijsky's personal intimacy with his little circle of disciples, in which respect his attitude to his fellow workers was quite different to that of Glinka, the example which he set in _The Stone Guest_ eventually found fewer imitators than Glinka's ideal model _A Life for the Tsar_. At the same time in certain particulars, and especially as regards melodic recitative, this work had a decided influence upon a later school of Russian opera. But this is a matter to be discussed in a later chapter. [Illustration: _Serov, V.A._ SEROV] CHAPTER VI WORK AND INFLUENCE OF SEROV