‘I Puritani’ is in some respects Bellini’s best work.  Foolish as the libretto is, the bitterest opponent of Italian cantilena could scarcely refuse to acknowledge the pathetic beauty of many of the songs.  It is a matter for regret, as well as for some surprise, that Bellini’s works should now be entirely banished from the Covent Garden repertory, while so many inferior operas are still retained.  In an age of fustian and balderdash, Bellini stood apart, a tender and pathetic figure, with no pretensions to science, but gifted with a command of melody as copious, unaffected, and sincere as has ever fallen to the lot of a composer for the stage.

The other Italian writers of this period may be briefly dismissed, since they did little but reproduce the salient features of their more famous contemporaries in a diluted form.  Mercadante (1797-1870) lived to an advanced age, and wrote many operas, comic and serious, of which the most successful was ‘Il Giuramento,’ a gloomy story of love and revenge, treated with a certain power of the conventional order, and a good deal of facile melody.  Pacini (1796-1867) is principally known by his ‘Saffo,’ an imitation of Rossini, which achieved a great success.  Vaccai (1790-1848) also imitated Rossini, but his ‘Giulietta e Romeo’ has intrinsic merits, which are not to be despised.

After the days of Rossini, opera buffa fell upon evil days.  Although the most famous musicians of the day did not disdain occasionally to follow in the footsteps of Cimarosa, for the most part the task of purveying light operas for the smaller theatres of Italy fell into the hands of second and third rate composers.  Donizetti, as we have seen, enriched the repertory of opera buffa with several masterpieces of gay and brilliant vivacity, but few of the lighter works of his contemporaries deserve permanent record.

The brothers Ricci, Luigi (1805-1859) and Federico (1809-1877), wrote many operas, both singly and in collaboration, but ’Crispino e la Comare’ is the only one of their works which won anything like a European reputation.  The story is a happy combination of farce and feerie.  Crispino, a half-starved cobbler, is about to throw himself into a well, when La Comare, a fairy, rises from it and bids him desist.  She gives him a purse of gold, and orders him to set up as a doctor, telling him that when he goes to visit a patient he must look to see whether she is standing by the bedside.  If she is not there, the sick man will recover.  Crispino follows her directions, and speedily becomes famous, but success turns his head, and he is only brought back to his senses by a strange dream, in which the fairy takes him down to a subterranean cavern where the lamp of each man’s life is burning and he sees his own on the point of expiring.  After this uncomfortable vision he is thankful to find himself still in the bosom of his family, and the opera ends with his vows of amendment.  The music is brilliant and sparkling, and altogether