Wagner did not shed his musical skin as absolutely as this Italian. Compare the young and the old Verdi. In style to-day Falstaff is younger than Il Trovatore half a century ago. Think of La donna è mobile and then of the fugued finale to Falstaff. And remember, it is not a fugato with imitative passages, nor the fugal treatment of an ensemble finale, but a well-constructed fugue in eight real parts, with episodes, inversions of the subject, stretti, and even a pedal point. It is not so pleasing in effect as the magnificent polyphonic close of Die Meistersinger, because of its severely formal construction. It sounds as if Verdi had said, “Go to; after all this mumming and masking I will show ye that I, too, can be serious.” So he fugues the words “Tutto nel mondo è burlo,” of all words in the world for such a form! What a gay old dog he must have been! And heaven knows what jokes he had in store for us, hidden in the capacious sleeves of his genius. I am sorry that an important engagement in the Lethean fields prevented von Bülow from being present at this Falstaff performance. He had to recant his opinion of the Manzoni Requiem; but after this fugue he would have surely bent the stubborn knee of pride and prostrated himself before the Italian god of music. No one can reproach Verdi with lack of ideas in Falstaff. They are never ending. The orchestra flows furiously, like a stream of quicksilver, tossing up repartee, argument, facts, amplifying, developing, and strengthening the text. No melody? Why, the opera is one long, merry tune—jocund, blithe, sweet, dulcet, and sunny. Few moods of melancholy, no moods of madness, but all gracious folly and fantasy.