This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ... all these works, Thetis et Pelee was about the only work that found favor with the public. It was necessary to await the coming of Campra to find an artist truly worthy of the Opera, and who should do honor to the French school. Andre1 Campra (166o-1744) was a musician of the first order. He was an original and fertile composer of sacred as well as profane music. He was chapel-master of Notre-Dame of Paris at the time of the performance of his first works, which obliged him to renounce these functions. He occupied a very important place in the history of dramatic music in France, and is properly the link which connects Lully to Rameau. His abundant and generous inspiration was fortified by a good and solid musical instruction. He was also gifted with a strong dramatic sentiment, and excited attention now by his tenderness, passion and pathos, now by his grace, elegance and vivacity. He broke with the traditions of Lully and his somewhat formal noblesse, in bring ing to the theatre the sense of rhythmic movement and force. One might say of his music that it saw, that it acted, that it felt. During his forty years service to the stage Campra offered to the public more than twenty important works. In the serious and dramatic genre, his Hesione and Tancrede, which are almost master-pieces, must be mentioned first; then Alcine, Iphigenie en Tauride, Camille reine des Volsques, Hippodamie, Idomenee, Teleph. In the light genre, and what was then called the opera-ballet, he gave /'Europe galante (1697), which was his brilliant d6but on the stage of the Opera; then the Carnaval de Venise, les Amours de Mars et Venus, Arethuse, les Fites venitiennes, le Ballet des dges, les Muses, etc. Campra, who wrote also a great deal of excellent religious music, was the teacher...