"_Ludwig_. 'No; most so-called operas are only plays with singing added; and the utter absence of dramatic effect, which is ascribed sometimes to the music, sometimes to the plot or to the words, is really due to the lifelessness of the mass of scenes, tacked together without inward connection or poetical truthfulness, and incapable of kindling music into life. The composer has often to work between the lines, as it were, on his own account, and the wretched words meander along in a side-channel, not to be brought into the musical current by any conceivable means. In such a case the music may be good enough; that is,--without having depth enough to carry away the listener with magic power, it may give a certain amount of pleasure, like a glittering play of gay colours. Then the opera is merely a concert, given on a stage, with dresses and scenery.' "_Ferdinand_. 'As it is the Romantic Opera, in its strictest sense, which is the only species that you recognise as opera, properly so-called, how about musical Tragedies, and Comic Operas in modern costume?--you repudiate them altogether, I presume.' "_Ludwig_. 'Oh, no; not at all. In most of the older Tragic Operas--such as are not written nowadays, unfortunately (either as regards plots or music)--what so powerfully sways the audience is the heroic nature of the action, and the inward strength of the characters and situations. That dark mysterious power which rules, controls, and disposes of Gods and Men, we see stalking along visibly before our eyes; we hear the eternal, irreversible, immutable decrees of Fate, to which the Gods themselves have to submit, pronounced and formulated aloud, in awful and mysterious tones. From Tragic matter of this sort the Fantastic element is perforce excluded; but a loftier language--in the wondrous accents of Music--has to be employed to depict that intercourse with the Gods which stirs the Mortals to a higher life, and to God-like achievements. Were not the ancient tragedies musically declaimed, by the way?--and did not that prove clearly the necessity for a higher medium of expression than ordinary language? The musical tragedies have inspired composers of genius in a quite special way--with a lofty, I might almost say, a _saintly_ style of writing. It is as if we mortals were wafted upwards, in some condition of mystic consecration, on the pinions of the tones of the golden harps of the Cherubim and Seraphim, to the realms of light, where we learn the mystery of our existence. What I would say, Ferdinand, is to point out the close relationship that there is between the old Church Style and the Tragic Opera, whence the old writers have framed a glorious style of their own, of which modern composers have no idea--not even excepting Spontini, with all his wealth and exuberance of fancy. The glorious Gluck, who stands apart by himself, a hero, I need say nothing about; but as an instance how the grand tragic style has influenced far