diences were artificial male sopranos, like Farinelli, who was frantically applauded for such circus tricks as beating a trumpeter in holding on to a note, or racing with an orchestra and getting ahead of it; or Caffarelli, who entertained his audiences by singing, in one breath, a chromatic chain of trills up and down two octaves. Caffarelli was a pupil of the famous vocal teacher, Porpora, who wrote operas consisting chiefly of monotonous successions of florid arias resembling the music that is now written for flutes and violins." All very well for the day, no doubt, but could Cuzzoni sing Isolde? Could Faustina sing Mélisande? And what modern rôles would be allotted to the Julian Eltinges of the eighteenth century?
When composers began to set dramatic texts to music, trouble immediately appeared in the doorway. The coevals of Sophie Arnould, the "creator" of Iphigénie en Aulide, are agreed that she was greater as an actress than she was as a singer. David Garrick pronounced her a finer actress than Clairon. From that hour to the present there has continued to rage a triangular conflict between critic, composer, and singer, which, up to date, it must be admitted, has been consistently won by the academic pundits, for, although the singer has struggled, she has generally bent under the blows of the critical knout,
