Rossini's "Moses" was the last of the Italian operas (the last by a
significant composer, at least) which used to be composed to ease
the Lenten conscience in pleasure-loving Italy. Though written to
be played with the adjuncts of scenery and costumes, it has less of
action than might easily be infused into a performance of
Mendelssohn's "Elijah," and the epical element which finds its
exposition in the choruses is far greater than that in any opera of
its time with which I am acquainted. In both its aspects, as
oratorio and as opera, it harks back to a time when the two forms
were essentially the same save in respect of subject matter. It is
a convenient working hypothesis to take the classic tragedy of
Hellas as the progenitor of the opera. It can also be taken as the
prototype of the Festival of the Ass, which was celebrated as long
ago as the twelfth century in France; of the miracle plays which
were performed in England at the same time; the Commedia
spiritiuale of thirteenth-century Italy and the Geistliche
Schauspiele of fourteenth-century Germany. These mummeries with
their admixture of church song, pointed the way as media of
edification to the dramatic representations of Biblical scenes
which Saint Philip Neri used to attract audiences to hear his
sermons in the Church of St. Mary in Vallicella, in Rome, and the
sacred musical dramas came to be called oratorios. While the
camerata were seeking to revive the classic drama in Florence,
Carissimi was experimenting with sacred material in Rome, and his
epoch-making allegory, "La Rappresentazione dell' Anima e del
Corpo," was brought out, almost simultaneously with Peri's
"Euridice," in 1600. Putting off the fetters of plainsong, music
became beautiful for its own sake, and as an agent of dramatic
expression. His excursions into Biblical story were followed for a