Both Monteverde and Gluck had made attempts at relieving the dulness of this method of accompaniment by the introduction not only of the orchestra, but also of fitting and suitable music on certain occasions. Rossini revived this plan in _Otello_, and since then it has been generally employed in all serious opera. From the fact that the instruments of the orchestra are necessary for its proper presentation, this form of recitative has received the name of _Recitativo Stromentato_. [Sidenote: “=William Tell=”] Rossini’s operas have mostly gone the way of all such light and trivial music, but among the more long-lived specimens may be named _La Cenerentola_, _Gazza Ladra_, and _William Tell_. The last-named, with its popular overture, is a work of much better class than its brethren, and was written some long period after the others, when Rossini himself began to be dissatisfied with his earlier works. The fact, however, remains that he can never have taken himself as a very serious musician, for the last forty years of his life were spent in idleness and he wrote practically nothing. [Sidenote: =Bellini and Donizetti=] What has been said of the operas of Rossini applies also in very large measure to those of his followers—Mercadante, Pacini, Bellini, and Donizetti, all of whom wrote on the same empty plan. Of these four the last-named produced works which have had the greatest longevity, and, thanks to certain _prime donne_ who have more belief in the beauty and skill of manipulation of their voices than they have love for the real and artistic in music, some are still to be heard during every opera season. The most famous Bellini opera is _Norma_, while _La Sonnambula_ runs it a close second. Donizetti is remembered by _Lucia di Lammermoor, Lucretia Borgia, La Favorita, La Fille du Régiment, and L’Elisir d’Amore_. [Sidenote: =Verdi, 1814-1901=] More worth attaches to the many beautiful works of the last of this school, Verdi, who lived to so ripe an age and so modernized his methods that his later operas all belong rightly to a post-Wagner period. But in his early scores Verdi wrote entirely on the Italian model, and although of sterner mould than Bellini and Donizetti, his works bear a close family resemblance to those of his immediate predecessors. Like them, Verdi had a ready gift of melody. Such operas as _Ernani_ (1844), _Rigoletto_ (1851), _Il Trovatore_ (1853), and _La Traviata_ (1853)—the last-named having been written in the short space of one month—are replete with energy and vigour and full of broad and sometimes somewhat vulgar tune. These works still hold their position on the stage, and appeal to those who love easily grasped and tuneful music, coupled with interesting dramatic action. [Illustration: VERDI.]