Jones and I went last Friday to _Don Giovanni_, Mr. Kemp {131} putting us
in free. It bored us both, and we like _Narcissus_ better. We admit the
beauty of many of the beginnings of the airs, but this beauty is not
maintained, in every case the air tails off into something that is much
too near being tiresome. The plot, of course, is stupid to a degree, but
plot has very little to do with it; what can be more uninteresting than
the plot of many of Handel’s oratorios? We both believe the scheme of
Italian opera to be a bad one; we think that music should never be
combined with acting to a greater extent than is done, we will say, in
the _Mikado_; that the oratorio form is far more satisfactory than opera;
and we agreed that we had neither of us ever yet been to an opera (I mean
a Grand Opera) without being bored by it. I am not sorry to remember
that Handel never abandoned oratorio after he had once fairly taken to
it.