Music finds its highest artistic development in the happy combinations which go to make up the opera. These combinations passed through various historic stages, and ripened into noble maturity by the end of the eighteenth century, under the guiding genius of the Handels, Mozarts, and Glucks of the times. Their legacy passed, in the nineteenth century, to a host of worthy successors, among whom stands, as a central figure, Verdi, the great Italian operatic composer; while Wagner, of Germany, has striven with herculean might to revolutionize the lyrical drama by polemical writing, by twofold authorship of words and notes, and by a new application of principles gathered from antecedent reformers. His efforts produced a commotion in the art world which might be compared to that excited by the rivalry between Buonocini and Handel in London, or Piccini and Gluck in Paris, but for the fact that in each of these instances the contention was between one composer and another, whereas in the case of Wagner it was the opposition of one composer to all others in the world, save the few who, believing in the man, his teachings, and his wonderful powers of application, undertook propagandism as a duty, and endeavored to make proselytes to their faith. He did not live to see the day when his efforts could be called completely successful, and his death in 1883 left judgment quite wide open as to his theoretical and practical merits. The nineteenth century closes with the question still on as to the permanence or evanescence of his many unique, ponderous, and revolutionizing productions. Verdi, who still lives, surpasses all the composers of his time in the beauty of his melodies and the intensity of his dramatic power. Rossini, whose “Guillaume Tell,” which was produced in Paris in 1829, was his masterpiece, ruled the operatic world before Verdi, until he died in Paris in 1868. Meyerbeer, whose principal operas are “Les Huguenots,” “Le Prophète,” and “L’Africaine” (the latter produced in Paris in 1865, the year after its composer’s death), was regarded as a remarkable composer, whose knowledge of effect was unsurpassed, and whose fine intelligence and musical knowledge almost made the world forgive him for frequent lack of inspiration. Halévy, whose only lasting success was “La Juive,” composed other operas, such as “Charles VI.,” “La Reine de Chypre,” “L’Eclair,” and “Les Mousquetaires de la Reine,” that achieved a certain amount of success in France, which success was interrupted by Halévy’s death at Nice in 1862.