Though written to be played with the adjuncts of scenery and costumes, it has less of action than might easily be infused into a performance of Mendelssohn's "Elijah," and the epical element which finds its exposition in the choruses is far greater than that in any opera of its time with which I am acquainted.

In both its aspects, as oratorio and as opera, it harks back to a time when the two forms were essentially the same save in respect of subject matter.

It is a convenient working hypothesis to take the classic tragedy of Hellas as the progenitor of the opera.

It can also be taken as the prototype of the Festival of the Ass, which was celebrated as long ago as the twelfth century in France; of the miracle plays which were performed in England at the same time; the Commedia spiritiuale of thirteenth-century Italy and the Geistliche Schauspiele of fourteenth-century Germany.

These mummeries with their admixture of church song, pointed the way as media of edification to the dramatic representations of Biblical scenes which Saint Philip Neri used to attract audiences to hear his sermons in the Church of St.Mary in Vallicella, in Rome, and the sacred musical dramas came to be called oratorios.