a dramatic composition set to music, and sung on the stage, accompanied with musical instruments, and enriched with magnificent dresses, machines, and other decorations.—This species of drama is of modern invention. In its present state it was not known even in Italy before the beginning of the last century; and at its introduction into England, a century afterwards, it divided the wits, literati, and musicians of the age. By those who were esteemed the best judges of the art, the English language was considered as too rough and inharmonious for the music of the opera; and, on the other hand, critics, whose taste was built on the basis of common sense, looked upon a drama in a foreign and unknown tongue as the greatest of all absurdities. Many of them, however, pleaded for operas in the English language; and it is well known that Addison, who was one of the opposers of the Italian opera on the London stage, wrote in his native tongue the opera of Rosamond. This is confessedly a beautiful poem; but, in the opinion of Dr. Burney, it adds nothing to Addison's fame, as it shows his total ignorance of the first principles of music, and of course his unfitness for the task he had undertaken.

In questions respecting the fine arts there is no appeal from the general taste; and therefore, as the French opera, which is in the language of the country where it is acted, has always been admired by persons of liberal education, it doubtless has merit considered as a drama; but how the dramas of this kind which are composed in Italian should find admirers in England, among persons who understand not a word of the language, is to us a matter of astonishment. The music of them may deserve and command the admiration of every one who has an ear; and the action of the fingers may be perfectly suitable to the subject represented; but of this suitability the majority of the audience can be no judges.

Even when the language is thoroughly understood, we should imagine, that, to make an opera agreeable to good sense, much would depend upon the choice of the subject; for it is surely absurd to have persons of all ranks, and on every occasion, perpetually accompanied with the regular responses of symphony. To hear Caesar, Scipio, or Macbeth, when forming plans to ensure victory, or hatching plots of treason and murder, talking in recitative and keeping time with fiddles, would surely disgust every person whose senses had not all evaporated in sound; but when the subject represented naturally admits of music in real life, we can suppose an opera to afford to persons of taste one of the most exquisite and refined entertainments of which human nature is capable. For a further account of the opera, see Music, n° 39, 42, 44, and Poetry, n° 133, &c.