Gluck’s “Orfeo” is even more interesting since the dark shadow of Strauss’s “Electra” has appeared to throw it into relief. Once in a decade or two “Orfeo” is revived to reveal anew how nobly Gluck interpreted the old Greek story. And it must be remembered that Gluck lived in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when music was quite inflexible in the matter of those dissonances which are considered by modern composers absolutely necessary to the expression of dramatic passion.
After Gluck came Mozart with his “Don Giovanni,” preserving the same balance between action and emotion, with an even greater unity of style and the same sincerity of utterance. Mozart possessed a supreme mastery over all his material, and a unique gift for creating pure and lucid melody. In his operas there is no admixture: his tragedy and his comedy are alike purely objective--_and it is chiefly this quality which prevents our understanding them_. We, in our day and age, cannot project ourselves into Mozart’s _milieu_; the tragedy at the close of “Don Giovanni” moves us no whit because it is devoid of shrieking dissonances and thunders of orchestral sound. Our nervous systems are adjusted to instrumental cataclysms. (We are conscious only of a _falling_ star; the serene and placid Heavens look down on us in vain.) Could we hear “Don Giovanni” in a small opera house sung in pure classic style, we should realize how beautiful it is; we should no longer crave the over-excitement and unrestrained passion of “La Tosca”; we should understand that the deepest passion is expressible without tearing itself to tatters, and that music may be unutterably tragic in simple major and minor mode. Don Giovanni is a type of operatic hero,--he may be found in some modified form in half the operas ever written,--but Mozart lifts him far above his petty intrigues and makes him a great figure standing for certain elements in human nature. (It is the failure of Gounod to accomplish this which puts “Faust” on the lower plane it occupies.) The stage setting of “Don Giovanni,”--the conventional rooms with gilt chairs, and the like,--the costumes, the acting, the music (orchestral and vocal), are all unified in one style. And this, coupled with the supreme mastery and the melodic gift of its composer, makes it one of the most perfect, if not the most perfect, of operas.