Gentlemen: A few days ago, it was shown you here how considerable is the influence of the fine arts upon the moral life of mankind; it was demonstrated how they can guide the human sentiment towards different ends, good or bad.
You will permit me now to call
your attention to a branch of the fine arts which, more now than ever, and more than all others, exercises its influence on the moral life of the people, and which merits thus the highest degree of interest from this assembly. It is dramatic poetry allied to musical art, that is, the Opera.
You all know the great extent of this branch, which has captivated the favor of the public to a degree perfectly exceptional, and which has banished to the second place all other branches of dramatic art.
The reasons of this extraordinary success are not so well known. The excessive predilection of public theatregoers for the opera is of quite recent date. Only forty years ago, the masterpieces of dramatic poetry enjoyed the same favor as those of dramatic music. By the side of Mozart and Carl Maria von Weber, Shakespeare and Schiller were found on a footing of equality; to-day they must retire before Meyerbeer and Offenbach, and be contented to remain eclipsed by these favorites of the public. If you question on the subject enthusiastic lovers of the opera, they will answer that, in our day, opera has made progress so considerable, and attained to such perfection, that the understanding of music is so general among the people, that this predilection of an enlightened public for dramatic music is the most natural thing in the world. You know there never can be question of any other than an enlightened public; for it cannot be doubted that every man who frequents the theatre is a man of progress. The
gallery represents the preparatory school; the boxes, the pupils in philosophy.
However, it is difficult to believe that artistic taste and love of music are the sole motives which cause the public to fill the halls of the opera-house. Forty years ago, the works of Mozart, of Weber, and other masters were well appreciated by connoisseurs, but they did not meet with as much success from the public as modern operas enjoy to-day. Or is it rather that Donizetti and Verdi, Meyerbeer and Offenbach, understand the art better than Mozart and Weber, Spohr and Spontini? We cannot admit it. The reason must be elsewhere, and surely, gentlemen, you wish to know it.
In a pamphlet published ten years ago, Richard Wagner says: “The essential foundation of art, as practised generally in our day, is industry: its moral end is gain, its æsthetic intention to kill ennui.”
This richly endowed artist has in view his colleagues in dramatic music, the composers of opera. He knew these men well, and understood himself how they set to work. But in the words quoted he has perfectly explained the end and tendency of modern opera.
The end is no other than gain; and, as means conducive to this end, effect is necessary, which must be attained at any price. Industrialism, that tyrant of our age, has also submitted the opera to its power, and under its domination the art exhausts itself forcibly, because tied to the fly-wheel of the artistic fabric. To produce effect, to surprise and bring out something which has not yet been seen—these are the objects of actual dramatic music. To this end is sacrificed not only art, but also all that exists—religion, politics, morality, and truth. This unfortunate