Operetta—Musical comedy—Ballad opera—Masque— Ballet—Objections thereto—Curiosities of construction—Pasticcio—Mixed language— Stereotyped casts—Curiosities of stage requirements —Wagner’s supernatural requirements—Curiosities of the music—Vocal cadenzas. The chief offshoot of Opera proper is Opera Comique, or Singspiel. This we have already described as being opera interspersed with spoken dialogue, not necessarily of a humorous nature: the mere fact, however, of its introduction confers on the work the title of Opera Comique in France, or of Singspiel in Germany. When one remembers that such works as Beethoven’s _Fidelio_ and Weber’s _Der Freischütz_ belong to this type, it is evidently of great importance, and a very large number of the operas already mentioned by a variety of composers come under this heading. [Sidenote: =Operetta=] Next perhaps in interest is the operetta, or short opera, originally a one-act light opera very frequently employing spoken dialogue; the general style, moreover, is lighter and of less imposing proportions than serious opera. In later days operettas are often prolonged into two or more acts, and have been made very specially familiar to English theatre-goers by the long series of works by Gilbert and Sullivan, which, properly speaking, belong to this category. [Sidenote: =Musical Comedy=] Of a somewhat lower grade is musical comedy, a popular type of stage piece making considerable use of music, but of only the less exalted forms of the art; no serious pretensions to artistic beauty are claimed by these works, the taste for which seems to be, at the present time, somewhat on the wane. [Sidenote: =Ballad Opera=] A form of opera for which the English have always had an affection is the “Ballad Opera,” really a string of airs, often by different composers, thrown more or less promiscuously into a story, with which they often appear to have no very close connection; there is practically no concerted music, and the whole bears some sort of resemblance to a ballad concert. The renowned _Beggar’s Opera_, which for years was a model for English entrepreneurs, belonged to this category, and set an example for hosts of imitators to follow; indeed, England is only now beginning to shake herself free from the trammels of this class of work, to which such operas as _The Bohemian Girl_ and _Maritana_ tend to approximate. The ballad opera also took root in America, where hundreds of such works flourished for a time, and it is not unknown in Germany, where it receives the title of “Liederspiel.” [Sidenote: =Masque=]