We should never have known the great days of the Italian theatre, if Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and Verdi had had to undergo our regime.

If Mozart had had to wait until he was forty to produce his first opera, we should never have had _Don Giovanni_ or _Le Nozze di Figaro_, for Mozart died at thirty-five.
The policy imposed on Bizet and Delibes certainly deprived us of several works which would now be among the glories of the repertoire at the Opera and the Opera-Comique.

That is an irreparable misfortune; one which we cannot sufficiently deplore..