_Otello_ is a perfectly modern opera, thoroughly up-to-date in design, material, and construction. Of its four acts, the last is distinctly the most masterly; the second being a little inferior to the third. The initial act is marked with Verdi's matured manner less than either of the others. Though somewhat fragmentary in places, the opera holds together with perfect homogeneity, and it must be regarded as a wholly uninfluenced score, more so than _Aïda_. The "Love duet" and Iago's "Credo" are the only pieces in the opera that recall Wagner, and they have too much of the Verdi and the intensely Italian about them to be mistaken. No! _Otello_ is an opera which only an Italian could write; a work which will always rank as a brilliant example of latest Italian grand-opera. In advanced thought and reasoning, together with depth of learning and exercise of the declamatory branch of vocal art, it is somewhat superior to _Aïda_, but it is doubtful whether it will ever become as popular, because it lacks the glorious picturesqueness and inspiration of that grand work.
Had Verdi's career ended with _Otello_ there would have been no difficulty in determining his place--a very forward one--in the world's history, and notably in the world of dramatic music. With the production of _Falstaff_, however, the wonderful vitality, resource, and inspiration of the giant mind broke out afresh, bewildering everybody concerning the art-possibilities that were still in store behind the more than octogenarian composer. It is the swan-song perhaps of the illustrious master, and a great song it indeed is. To think that such a score should be the easy pleasurable outcome of the brain of a man bordering upon his eightieth year was, at the time, one of the most extraordinary features in connection with the production of _Falstaff_, and the fact will ever stand amongst remarkable efforts in musical annals. _Il Trovatore_ is a monument of melody, a standing example of what passionate tune can be and is as an element of art; _Otello_ was an extraordinary development in breadth of style and usage, vocal and instrumental; but _Falstaff_ surpassed all. It sums up all that is best in Verdi's musical mind and method, and will ever serve as a standard of Italian national art, _nemine dissentiente_. It is the most brilliant, the most masterly, of all his operatic productions. Gorgeous in its wealth of invention and consummate skill, it places Verdi on his highest artistic pedestal. Like _Aïda_ and _Otello_ it is pre-eminently a musician's work, and shows the widened style of the composer, which used to be regarded as a Wagner imitation more than either of its predecessors. With all its delightful, unceasing humour the work does not appeal readily to the popular mind, the fact being that to understand and enjoy it the taste must be educated. Like Wagner's operas, _Falstaff_ is a score that taxes the critical sense, and the more musical and highly cultivated the listener is, the more will Verdi's latest music command attention. Nor does this mean that the opera will not live. On the contrary, as musical knowledge becomes more and more spread, _Falstaff_ and _Otello_, the advanced handiwork of Verdi, will prove to be music of a far more satisfactory nature than that luxuriant passionate sort which abounds in _Trovatore_, _Traviata_, and other young Italy operas.