Page:Red (1925).pdf/221



Since the Florentines, whom we may credit with some taste in the matter of art, invented the opera, not a month has passed without some glabrous-headed numskull or other rising to proclaim shrilly that the lyric drama is a by-blow form, not worthy of serious consideration by respectable, high-minded lovers of music. Others than numskulls have offered contributions to this popular cause. Addison and Charles Lamb ridiculed the opera, and every critic of today has slugged it with cherry-pits and pebbles. What seems to have escaped attention is the fact that of all music-forms the opera, valiantly withstanding these attacks, has remained the most consistently popular. It is even "reformed" every half-century or so by a Gluck, a Meyerbeer, a Wagner, or a Debussy. Also, I may add, the very music critics who affect a staggering contemptuousness for music drama in the abstract spend a great deal of unnecessary time at the Metropolitan Opera House and write a great many unnecessary words about the performances there. The explanation of this phenomenon, I