The Boris Godounoff before them was a remorse-stricken regicide, whose good works, if he did any, had to be summed up for their imagination in the fact that he loved his son.

In all this, and also in some of its music, the new opera was of the opera operatic.

But to the unhappily disingenuous (or perhaps it would be better to say, to the instructed) there was much more in the new opera; and it was this more which so often gave judgment pause, even while it stimulated interest and irritated curiosity.

It was a pity that a recent extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm about a composer and an opera should have had the effect of distorting their vision and disturbing their judgment.
There was a reason to be suspicious touching this enthusiasm, because of its origin.

It came from France and not from the home land of the author of the play or the composer of the music.