In the Italian form of opera, the aggressive and encroaching qualities of the _prime donne_ threw certain portions of the music (_i.e._, their own arias and songs) into such prominence as to dwarf all else. Abuses were again to the fore; the solo singers, male as well as female, made the opera; plot, action, suitability, dramatic fitness—all mattered little so long as there were plenty of flourishes, vocal cadenzas, and roulades. [Sidenote: =Wagner=] As in the days of Gluck, a strong man arose to revolutionize the whole trend of things, to turn the music back into its proper channel, to stop its overwhelmingly preponderant importance, and to restore harmony among the arts employed for the proper rendering of musical drama. This man was Wagner, beyond whose achievements opera has as yet moved no step. His methods of orchestration, his additions to the ordinary orchestra, his devices of guiding themes, and of the continual employment of song-like (although unrhythmic) melody, known as _Melos_, constitute so many new features in the history of opera. Modern opera, since his time, has presented us with nothing sufficiently fresh to justify for itself the claim to have had any radical influence in operatic development. The resources of the technique of the art, the increased freedom with which remote discords and far-fetched modulations are attacked, the greater facility exhibited by composers in welding various themes together, and in their use of the orchestra, are only a following of the principles and practices of Wagner. Since his mighty operas were produced there is no epoch-making event to chronicle. Thus, side by side with the development and progress of the composition and practice of music, opera has developed and progressed, from the days of the simple monodic school, to the complex polyphony of the twentieth century. This has been briefly, and without detail, demonstrated above; and we now turn to a more analytical examination of the various phases of opera. Before doing this, however, it will be as well to examine a little more deeply into the causes of the somewhat frequent checks in its history, which we have cursorily mentioned, and of the reforms and uprootings of the abuses which have constantly hindered its growth: a brief enquiry into those abuses will help us more clearly to understand what opera really should be, and also how much is due to those stalwart heroes of opera who have defied the whole of the civilized world in their efforts to establish, or to re-establish, it upon a proper basis. CHAPTER III. THE REFORMERS OF OPERA: MONTEVERDE, GLUCK, AND WAGNER.