SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN _Frontispiece_ Photogravure from the Painting by Sir John Everett Millais, P.R.A. ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI 20 RICHARD WAGNER 26 JEAN BAPTISTE LULLY 42 DOMENICO CIMAROSA 64 GUISEPPE VERDI 72 JOHANN ADAM HILLER 78 NICOLA PICCINI 82 J. OFFENBACH 88 GIACOMO PUCCINI 130 PIETRO MASCAGNI 132 RUGGIERO LEONCAVALLO 136 SIR A. C. MACKENZIE 146 BAYREUTH THEATRE 181 MADAME MELBA 200 CHAPTER I. WHAT IS OPERA? What is Opera?—Derivation of term—A musical work—An artificial product—Its justification—Emotional effect of music—Hybrid opera—Modern taste demands one medium of expression—A definition—Music an accessory to opera, but an important one. [Sidenote: =What is Opera?=] What is Opera? A question easy to ask, but one that by no means finds so ready an answer; the definitions, “A drama set to music,” “A musical play,” and so forth, being but loose and inaccurate, and not conveying any real idea as to that which they seek to define. [Sidenote: =Derivation of Term=] The term “Opera,” derived, or rather abbreviated from the words “Opera in Musica” (Works in music—_i.e._, a musical work), may be at once seen to be only a convenient title that has found favour by its brevity and through lack of a better: translate it and read “works,” and we may see that it is a meaningless term in all else than that it is something created. And what is this “something” that has been created, that is in people’s mouths so often, and that we designate by the word “Opera”? The least cultured will be able to answer that it is a work for the stage, in which music plays a prominent part: that it is this, and something more, must be shown as we study its rise and development. [Sidenote: =A Musical Work=]