"The essential novelty of Dafne and Euridice was the fusion of two apparently incompatible elements, the spoken comedy of the theatre and the lyrical melody of the chamber. Plays with incidental music were no new thing; but we can see from the musical plays of our own day that the two elements form a mechanical mixture and not a chemical combination, whether we judge the effect by the standard of Egmont or by that of The Geisha. With Dafne and Euridice the audience were taken into a new world, of which the songs and madrigals of earlier days had only shown them fleeting glimpses. Only when they were enclosed within the magic circle of unbroken musical sound from the beginning of the story to its end, could they partake of that strange and wonderful experience which opera has revealed to us, that consciousness that we ourselves are a shadows of unrealities cast for a moment on those Elysian fields where Tristan and Isolde have gone to join Orpheus and Eurydice in an existence which is real and eternal."

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Opera
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