Tolstoy might as well have pointed out that sculpture is ridiculous, since no human being is ever all of one color, body and clothes, as a statue must be, whether it is made of marble or of bronze. He could have declared that painting is equally untrue to the mere facts of life, since it represents nature absolutely without motion, as when it depicts a field of waving corn which does not really wave but stands fixed forever. If Tolstoy or any one else refuses to accept the conventions of any art, there is no possible reply, except to make it clear to him that he is thereby depriving himself of the delight which that art can give. A departure from the mere fact underlies every art; and it is only because of that departure that the art exists. By convention, that is to say, by tacit agreement between the artist and the public, the artist is allowed to deny certain of the facts of life in order to provide the public with the specific pleasure which only his art can afford.
In the Shaksperian drama the underlying convention is that the persons of the play belong to a race of people who always express themselves poetically in English blank verse. In opera this necessary agreement requires us to concede the existence of men and women to whom song is the natural means of communicating all their sentiments and all their thoughts. If we are willing to accept this implied contract, then there is no absurdity in Tristan's singing with his dying breath, since he belongs to a race of creatures who have no other method of speech. If we are unwilling to be parties to this agreement, if we deny the existence of any such creatures, then there is nothing for us to do but to keep out of the opera-house. It was this convention which Tolstoy rejected, and by this rejection he refused the enjoyment which the opera can give to those who are satisfied to accept its conditions.
But there is no denying that the imperative operatic convention requires us to admit a very violent departure from the facts of life as we all know them. We are now so accustomed to blank verse in Shakspere's plays, tragic and comic, that we accept it almost without noticing it. By long habit, we have come to consider blank verse as "natural" in a poetic play, especially when that play sets before us heroic figures of the remote past. And here is the danger in the operas which have been composed on books made out of modern popular pieces, more or less realistic in their atmosphere. The "naturalness" of the men and women in these plays of to-day tends to draw attention to the "unnaturalness" of their customary use of song to express their emotions.