came before him. He cast them into a single mold and manner, known afterward as the standard Italian opera. The characteristics of the Italian opera may be summed up as follows: the musical introduction, or overture, is a special form with several parts — the first fast, the second slow, and the third fast as well. The beauty and splendor of the vocal melody is all that the composer aims at; the story was merely the foundation on which the musician built his music; and the singers were expected to add tunes of their own to their parts during the repetition of a single passage. The voices were very beautiful, and most of the opera stories were mythical.
As for opera in France, its foundations were laid at the hands of Lully (1632–1687) and Rameau (1683–1764), but it took on a rigid character, empty of movement and of expressive power, as with the Italian opera. There was a looking forward and a longing for the day when a composer of genius would appear to breathe life into French music. And what the Parisians hoped for came at the hands of a German-Bohemian settled in Paris: Gluck (1714–1787).
Gluck introduced several fundamental reforms into opera which worked like magic upon men's souls and laid down the rules of the modern opera, which most of the opera composers who followed adopted, in greater or lesser measure. Gluck wanted to be rid of the vanity of the singers and the composers' submission to them; he worked also to curb the tiresome, unnecessary repetitions, the singer's own additions to the melody during the repeat, and the
musical interludes that break up the unity of the opera. What he sought by his reforms was that the composer should give more care to the music than before, so that it should heighten the splendor of the meanings and expressions without overwhelming them. For music must be as shading is to a drawing: it gives the drawing life without altering its principal lines. Likewise, the overture should prepare the spectators for what is to follow. Gluck desired his music to be of the utmost simplicity, refusing affectation and shunning entanglements. And he sanctioned the breaking of any musical rule or restriction whatsoever, should it stand as an obstacle in the way of art and its progress.
Is a love marriage longer-lived than a marriage without love?
A Dutch specialist in marriage matters says that the girl of today thinks the matter over before she embarks on marriage more than in the past, and that the proportion of girls who marry for love has greatly increased in recent years.
He says he investigated this subject with two thousand wives, and found that of the wives past forty, only half had married after falling in love; while among wives under twenty-five, the proportion of those who had married for love was five out of every six.