ensemble for seven voices and chorus, which has hardly been excelled
in ingenuity of treatment. The third act opens with a charmingly
sentimental aria for Anna ("With what delight I behold"), followed in
the third scene by a stirring chorus of mountaineers, leading up to
"the lay ever sung by the Clan of Avenel,"--the familiar old ballad,
"Robin Adair," which loses a little of its local color under French
treatment, but gains an added grace. It is stated on good authority
that two of Boieldieu's pupils, Adolph Adam and Labarre, assisted him
in the work, and that the lovely overture was written in one
evening,--Boieldieu taking the andante and the two others the
remaining movements. Though a little old-fashioned in some of its
phrasing, the opera still retains its freshness and beautiful
sentiment. Its popularity is best evinced by the fact that up to June,
1875, it had been given 1340 times at the theatre where it was first
produced.




BOITO.

Arrigo Boito was born in 1840, and received his musical education in
the Conservatory at Milan, where he studied for nine years. In 1866 he
became a musical critic for several Italian papers, and about the same
time wrote several poems of more than ordinary merit. Both in
literature and music his taste was diversified; and he combined the
two talents in a remarkable degree in his opera of "Mephistopheles,"
the only work by which he is known to the musical world at large. He
studied Goethe profoundly; and the notes which he has appended to the
score show a most intimate knowledge of the Faust legend. His text is