Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/474

410 posers and the grand opera of our time is a melancholy affair. Heaven knows there are excuses enough without Mr. Cecil Forsythe's illuminating theory that an expanding, outward-looking, and imperialist nation does not produce great music. But it seems to us that all of our composers (except those who are making light opera) are making desperate efforts to write Italian, German, or Russian grand opera, accepting all of the traditions even when their material is as indigenous as an Indian legend or Rip Van Winkle. It does not occur to them that Italian grand opera was as artificially imposed on England centuries ago as it is on us to-day, and that its traditions have nothing to do with our lives. It is as reasonable for an American to write a Tristan as for Wagner to have done a Parsifal. But Parsifal is a comparatively German opera, and Verdi's Falstaff is magnificently Italian. Crimes of passion and the absurdities of operatic recitative are foreign, and until we reform them and all the things they represent, we may not have an opera worth listening to. Until now—unless we have missed something—no grand opera by Americans has given us half the musical and emotional satisfaction of Mr. Irving Berlin's Stop! Look! Listen! If that be treason, let Mr. Gatti make the most of it.

" name is John Wellington Wells, a dealer in magic and spells" The other sorcerer, H. G. of the same name, after casting a spell on half the young novelists of England, is embarking on another adventure, a rather bouncy affair as usual, but with splendid proportions. It is, we take it, a history of civilization, and Mr. Wells is being checked by scientists of distinction while his effervescent mind seethes with ideas about the world. One cannot help being a bit staggered by the thought of this undertaking, even at half-a-crown per month. Mr. Wells is the last man whose history we would unreservedly accept; he is, none the less, the only man whose history of the world we feel confident of reading without "skipping the descriptions." What we cannot understand is that he should trouble to supply illustrations.