“When I undertook to set the opera of _Alceste_ to music, I resolved to avoid all those abuses which had crept into Italian opera through the mistaken vanity of singers and the unwise compliance of composers, and which had rendered it wearisome and ridiculous, instead of being, as it once was, the grandest and most imposing stage of modern times. I endeavoured to reduce music to its proper function, that of seconding poetry, by enforcing the expression of the sentiment, and the interest of the situations, without interrupting the action, or weakening it by superfluous ornament.... I have been very careful never to interrupt a singer in the heat of a dialogue, not to stop him in the middle of a piece, either for the purpose of displaying the flexibility of his voice on some favourable vowel, or that the orchestra might give him time to take breath before a long sustained note.... My object has been to put an end to abuses against which good taste and good sense have long protested in vain.... There was no rule which I did not consider myself bound to sacrifice for the sake of effect.” [Sidenote: =Triumph of his Methods=] From these quotations we may form some idea both of the serious errors that had crept into opera and of the thorough nature of the reforms which Gluck contemplated. He had many, and severe, battles to fight before he gained public opinion to his side; but eventually he brought the artistic world round to his point of view, with the result that a complete change of method was again adopted by composers: the progress of opera, which had drifted into a wrong channel, was again headed in the right direction by a masterly hand, and for some time a more real and genuine school of opera held the boards. [Sidenote: =Another Retrogression=] But history repeats itself. Years passed away and operas were written both good and bad: Mozart, with his beautiful and delicate pen; Beethoven, with his imperishable picture of the faithful wife; Weber, the composer _par excellence_ of Romantic opera; Spohr, and others all left their influences—and in the main thoroughly artistic and beautiful ones—upon music drama. To this chain of great classics there succeeded, however, a group of lesser luminaries whose tendencies were less truthfully artistic, whose leanings were popular rather than æsthetic, and whose influence was to a great extent mischievous. [Sidenote: =Rossini, 1792-1869=]