Goldmark's music is highly spiced. He was an eclectic, and his
first aim seems to have been to give the drama a tonal investiture
which should be in keeping with its character, external as well as
internal. At times his music rushes along like a lava stream of
passion, every measure pulsating with eager, excited, and exciting
life. He revels in instrumental color. The language of his
orchestra is as glowing as the poetry attributed to the royal poet
whom his operatic story celebrates. Many composers before him made
use of Oriental cadences, rhythms, and idioms, but to none do they
seem to have come so like native language as to Goldmark. It is
romantic music, against which the strongest objection that can be
urged is that it is so unvaryingly stimulated that it wearies the
mind and makes the listener long for a change to a fresher and
healthier musical atmosphere.




CHAPTER VI

"HERODIADE"


In the ballet scene of Gounod's most popular opera Mephistopheles
conjures up visions of Phryne, Lais, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen
of Troy to beguile the jaded interest of Faust. The list reads
almost like a catalogue of the operas of Massenet whose fine talent
was largely given to the celebration of the famous courtesans of
the ancient world. With the addition of a few more names from the
roster of antiquity (Thais, Dalila, and Aphrodite), and some less