I propose to-night to trace the development of opera in broad outlines, not so much from a musical as from a dramatic point of view. It is my contention that music is capable of heightening and interpreting dramatic action and that it does not appear unnatural that the drama should be expressed by song in the place of speech. I mention this because some are of opinion that, inasmuch as music is not the usual form of human utterance, music-drama can never be more than an artistic anomaly, an essentially artificial form of drama striving to be natural, and that, therefore, the. artificiality of both_music-drama and opera being equal, the latter is to be preferred as being a more purely musical form of art. I think, on the contrary, that music-drama is natural.