In spite of all that has been spoken and written during the past five years in depreciation of Wagner, the critic who is still capable of taking a detached view of the world of opera must have considerable difficulty in honestly departing from his pre-war estimate of Tristan und Isolde, as the single beau idéal of perfect operatic achievement.

Yet if there exists in opera nothing finer than the mighty love epic of the great Teuton, there are undoubtedly in German, French, Russian, Italian, and even English, operatic literature, not a few approximations to the standard that Wagner has set, and one of the benefits, which, small indeed though it be, is none the less real, that have already risen out of the war is the creation and regeneration of an interest in the musical productions of other nations, and the search for novelties and works of genius there.

We are all aware of the wealth of new musical material that has been discovered in Russia and France, to a very large extent, since the war commenced. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the whole question is the tremendous reawakening of interest in the various schools of Italian Opera. Verdi and Puccini are, of course, the prime favorites, but signs are by no means wanting that other Italian composers have only to be given a chance of showing what they already have done, or are yet prepared to do, in order to be taken to the heart of a public which every day gives more and more evidence of having benefited greatly by the long

and disinterested spade work of the devoted pioneers of opera in England, and in English, whose labors in that direction must take an honorable place in the history of British music, and whose names should never be allowed to pass into oblivion so long as Art is Art, and the love of it remains a living force and quickening inspiration.

A provincial touring company which recently visited my own city of Edinburgh, gave in one week separate performances of eight different operas, seven of which were Italian (the remaining one being French-Gounod's evergreen Faust), and all to packed houses.

Since the alleged death of the pure bel canto style of Italian opera there have arisen many new, and hitherto undreamed of, kinds of operatic composition in the musically famous southern peninsula. The later Verdi, Puccini, and Mascagni and Leoncavallo respectively represent three distinct and separate schools, and now, in Wolf-Ferrari, we have a fourth, the influence of which is decidedly a growing one, and in the future development of Italian music I venture to believe it will have as much to be reckoned with as will the productions of any or all of the other three tendencies represented by the works of the four first-named composers.

Signor Wolf-Ferrari is still a comparatively young man, having seen the light for the first time as recently as 1876. He is but forty-three. His father was a German and his mother

an Italian, and while he received his musical education in Munich he has since come into the closest possible touch with the æsthetic movements of modern Italy, as principal of the Conservatoire of Music of Venice. And in any attempt to arrive at a true estimate of his music these facts must be kept strictly in view.

Efforts have recently been made to disprove the Wagner influence on the later Verdi, but that is only another of those futile attempts to demonstrate the absence of anything good whatever in the Germany of even pre-war days. It was more than coincidence that Rigoletto and Il Trovatore should have appeared immediately after the production of Lohengrin and the publication of The Art of the Future and Opera and Drama, and although the Italian maëstro then reverted for a time to his earlier style, it was no less significant that Aida should have come so closely upon the first appearances of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, and the earlier operas of the 'Ring.' And who can honestly dispute the Wagner influence upon Otello and Falstaff?

Yet the Wagner influence on Verdi was of a character purely external and, as Cecil Forsyth justly remarks, 'While fully alive to the reforms effected by Wagner in Germany, he never went beyond adopting such of them as seemed to him sound for carrying out his own designs. He had no sympathy with excessive length. His practical experience taught him not to risk stage-waits. He kept the musical interest centred in the voice, not in the orchestra. He did He did not wholly ignore the gospel of leitmotifs, but he was no slave to it. For the portrayal of individual men and things he trusted to larger means of characterization rather than to short musical mottoes. As a result

he is never dull; of all operatic composers he gives the least opportunity for cuts.'

In the case of Signor Wolf-Ferrari, however, the matter is entirely different. He certainly resembles the older master in so far as two tendencies combine to make a perfect balance of melodic and harmonic achievement, but while, as I have shown above, only one of these is inherent in the Verdi of the later operas, both are racially, as well as by his duality of training, inherent in the work of Wolf-Ferrari.

His output for the theatre is already of considerable abundance, his Diable Grossier, Cendrillon, Sulamite, and The Secret of Suzanne having all already attained a success of by no means insignificant extent. It is by his later works, The Jewels of the Madonna and Donne Curiose, however, that his fame has really attained world-wide proportions, and as in essentials they differ very little from the lesser known operas, the following generalizations are based largely upon the principles tacitly enunciated in the structure and musical development of these works.

The musical diction of Signor WolfFerrari may be described as a sort of compound of the styles of Richard Strauss and Pietro Mascagni. It is vigorous, bizarre, somewhat overloaded with color, and it makes frequent and occasionally banal descents to the purely commonplace. It is more spectacular, if one may be allowed to use such an epithet in relation to music, than interpretative of the action and development of the play. Yet it is always strictly rhythmical, and a well-known French critic, in describing it as a sort of ‘organized noise,' very aptly puts the matter in the proverbial nutshell. But it must not be supposed that, fond as the composer is of noise, and much as there is of it in his work, the bruit organisé,

THERE are few people with whom Australians fraternize more easily than with the average American citizen. Already in the chief business centres of the commonwealth, Sydney and Melbourne, there is a considerable number of Americans resident in the interest of trade or transport. The energetic manufacturer and the prolific American inventor, assisted by enlightened patents laws, have been of great service to the Australian producer. He has been supplied through these with modern machinery, with motor cars, oil, steel, harvesters, axes, dental instruments, tinned salmon, paper, textiles, tobacco, and 'notions' of all sorts- as a glance at the Australian imports statistics will show. In many lines, as, for instance, in agricultural machinery and tools, the bulk of trade has been large enough to bring representatives of American houses to the commonwealth, where they seem readily to make themselves at home.

The effect of the war has been to enlarge greatly the interchange of trade between the United States and Australia. Imports from the former have almost doubled since 1914, and have increased from 11 per cent to 22 per cent of the total imports into the commonwealth.

Partly in consequence of this expansion of trade between the two countries, and partly in view of Australian interests generally, the Federal Government has within the last two years dispatched a Trade Commissioner to the United States, who has

taken up permanent quarters in New York, with the function of organizing and promoting commerce between the two countries.

This is dull matter, but it points to the solid foundation on which a shrine dedicated to friendship and coöperation in the advancement of civilization may soon be raised. For there are no two communities in the world, under different flags, which it is more interesting to compare at the present time than the great republic of the northern hemisphere and the great, though much younger, commonwealth of the southern; and there are no two between which a fruitful friendship is more likely to flourish.

Let us consider briefly some of their points of likeness and of difference. Take from the United States the area of the great lakes, and you will have a land surface almost identical in size with Australia, and covering zones of temperature which are similar, though they do not precisely corre spond in latitude. In the southern land the hot belt lies toward the north; in the northern, its position is reversed. We have here two great countries very rich in natural resources, the early development of which has been due to the efforts of men mainly of British stock, although the United States, if we date from the foundation of Virginia, had some two hundred years' start of Australia, and an advantage in proximity to the Old World.

The United States, though older politically, is the younger country geologically. It has high mountains

of relatively recent formation, whereas, the like features that existed in Australia and are said to have once matched the Himalayas are denuded to their chines, with an elevation now of less than eight thousand feet. Still, in richness and fertility of soil the areas are comparable, and also in ranges of climate. The west coast of the United States, from Washington territory to lower California, enjoys a climate which in its variety resembles that to be found in the most populous parts of Australia, say from Melbourne to Moreton Bay. The clear atmosphere of New South Wales, and its fruits and vegetable products, have caused it to be mentioned in comparison with California, and Sydney has been cited as the San Francisco of the south, the wondrous harbor of Port Jackson finding its parallel in the Golden Gate.

It is when one comes to population that one realizes that, whereas, the great Republic of America is a matron with a large family and many mansions, her younger cousin in the South Pacific is like a young mother with as yet a small brood, and that her larger hope lies in the future. Five million to one hundred million! That is about the proportion to-day, and of that five million the younger country has nearly a full half gathered together in the environs of the capital cities of its six states.

In fact, important as Australia is as a contributor to the world's wealth in animal, vegetable, and mineral produce, the country is but at the beginning of its possibilities even in respect of primary products, and has extensive rural areas within easy reach of existing settlements, of which nothing like full use is now being made. There is abundant room even in the more temperate zones for a population of treble the present number, and if it

were settled there to-day the financial burdens imposed by the world war would rest lightly on Australia's shoulders.

But if this great and unexpected responsibility does for a commonwealth that has no wish to haul down the Union Jack, what, in a former century, its start on an independent career and the adoption of 'Old Glory' did for the United States,makes her rise to the occasion, exert her strength, and develop her cȧpabilities, no less may be predicted for the younger than for the elder of these two free and great confederations. And nothing would please the States of Australia more than to maintain close and cordial relations with the United States of America, on whose federal constitution they have in some respects modeled their own.

Australia at present is a sparsely populated continent, practically able to produce anything, which has been content or constrained by force of circumstances to lie largely fallow. It has great cities where professional and commercial life flourishes, and a wellto-do people whose daily round and common task is not so exacting as to deprive them of the opportunity and ability to get a fair amount of entertainment out of life. Great fortunes have been made, but yet it cannot be called a plutocratic country. It has adult suffrage, and the vote of the working classes is in the majority in its electorates. It is a land where the problems of democracy, and of responsible government controlled by those classes which in English-speaking communities are the most numerous, are being practically evolved. In no other country, except possibly Switzerland, is the saying vox populi, vox Dei more true than in Australia.

Its politics are strenuous but clean. Every shade of opinion and every