Manuel del Popolo Garcia. Marchesi, Grisi and Mario. Manuel Garcia
and the Swedish Nightingale. Other Swedish songstresses. Patti.
Queens of song pass in review. Two Wagner interpreters. A Valkyrie's
horse. A word for American girls.


The Opera and Its Reformers 213

Evolution of drama. At the altar of Dionysus. Greek poetry and
music. Aristotle on Greek stage-plays. Æschylus and Sophocles.
Euripides. Words, music and scenic effect. Lenæan theatre
exhibitions. More costly than Peloponnesian war. Roman dominion.
Primitive Christian church. St. Augustine. Mystery, miracle,
morality and passion plays. Strolling histriones, etc. Florence
"Academy." Vincenzo Galilei. Monody. Polyphonic music. Emilio del
Cavalieri. Vittorio Archilei. Music of Greeks recovered. Peri.
Monteverde and his work. First opera house. Alessandro Scarlatti.
Troubadours. Lully, Rameau and French opera. Purcell, Handel and
music in England. Gluck, the regenerator. German opera. Mozart,
Beethoven, Weber and Wagner. What came from Bach, Chopin and
Berlioz. Rossini's melodies. Wagner's influence. Verdi, the grand
old man.


Certain Famous Oratorios 235

Neri's oratory. Dramatized versions of biblical stories. Palestrina
and harmonies of celestial Jerusalem. Religious dramas of Roswitha.
Laura Guidiccioni's first oratorio text. Music by Cavalieri. At
Santa Maria della Vallicella. Orchestra behind the scene.