T

HAT brilliant Italian composer, Umberto Giordano, had qualms about putting the great Napoleon into grand For Giordano, as we read in Musical America, fascinated by the brilliant success of Sardou's com

opera.

edy, was struck with the idea of using the piece operatically. In this he was abetted, it is said, by Verdi, who was enthusiastic over its possibilities. Giordano pointed out the risks involved in putting Napoleon into grand opera. This objection was overridden by the composer of Aïda. No living operagoer had known Napoleon. It might be incongruous to provide him with romanzas and cavatinas, but Napoleon could legitimately vent dramatic recitatives. "If," added Verdi, "I could make Rhadames sing, why can not you do the same for Napoleon?" Whatever may be the facts of the case, adds this organ of the musical public, it must be confessed, it thinks, that Giordano's scruples were much better founded than Verdi's arguments.

"It is not Napoleon's well-known insensibility to the finer elements of music and his utter lack of anything approaching a singing voice that renders his operatic representation objectionable, but that he stands embodied in the popular consciousness of all nations as so familiar and welldefined a personality invested with attributes of such absolute conciseness. To essay the idealization of such a figure is to make it ridiculous. The attempt to personify him operatically is as foredoomed to failure of this kind as would be the endeavor SO to present George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. As Frederick H. Martens most pertinently remarked in a recent admirable article on Napoleon in this journal: Rhadames is an operatic lay figure, just as Alexander or Julius Cæsar or Charlemagne would be. They are, personages, not personalities. But Napoleon is still near enough our own time for us to feel humanly in touch with him. . . . Rhadames no more appeals to us in the same sense than does Cleopatra's Needle or the Sphinx.' On the other hand, granting Verdi's premise, there is a singular childishness about Giordano's fear of putting 'romanzas and cavatinas' in Napoleon's mouth-for song in opera is never to be interpreted in terms of itself but as the speech of the personages concerned, quite as the complex metric forms of the Greek

tragedians, the blank verse of Shakespeare and the rhymed Alexandrines of Corneille and Racine are not primarily poetic formulae but the deputed means of conversation sanctioned by a basic convention.

"But where his understanding of aesnotoriously was in his conception of Sarthetic principles failed, Giordano most dou's play as a vehicle fundamentally suited to operatic treatment. To be sure he was not alone in his error, for the fashion of forcing successful dramas into lyric molds was extremely widespread for a long time. There has seemed to be a marked disregard for the tribute most conspicuously to the sucfact that the very elements which concess of a theatrical piece-particularly of the modern type-are the very ones most subversive to the fortunes of an opera. It is needless to inquire deeply at present into the nature of the principles involved. The matter may be dismissed with the statement that the cardinal re

quirement of a truly successful opera

libretto is an emotional element sus

ceptible of musical expression, set in a milieu wrapped in an atmosphere of poetic remoteness and so cumulatively developed and sustained as to allow the upbuilding of an organic musical structure."

Now "Madame Sans-Gêne," the Giordano opera just produced at the Metropolitan Opera, is, we are invited to believe, deficient in these essential characteristics. It does, of course, contain a brief love scene that affords the composer legitimate opportunity for more or less expansive lyrical utterance, while the revolutionary bustle of the first act and the Duchess's lesson in deportment in the second are likewise amenable to characteristic musical treatment. But beyond this there is little of specifically musical equivalent. The strength of the play lies in the suppleness and glitter of its dialog, the deft wit and the ingenuity of its character drawing. The actual production of "Madame Sans-Gêne" proves to the periodical we quote that Giordano has not conquered the difficulties presented by putting Napoleon in grand opera. Here is the verdict of The Musical

Courier:

"A number of musicians, including Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, Weber, Wolf, and even Verdi in several instances have shown themselves to be poor selectors of suitable libretto material for opera, and Giordano is to be included in the number

a

so far as 'Mme. Sans-Gêne' is concerned, even tho he showed acumen when he set some of his former works, 'André Chenier,' 'Fedora,' 'Siberia,' etc.

'Mme. Sans-Gêne' is unoperatic except for comedy purposes. There is no love interest, the chief incidents center about a personage (Napoleon) who is not introduced until the third act, the endings of the acts are without suspense or dramatic force, and the fragmentary incidents throughout the play offer no stimulus to the imagination and no appeal to the emotions, unless the several scenes of conjugal tenderness be excepted.

"Giordano's music is agreeable, euphonious, smooth, ingratiating, but never moving or noble. The attempts at dramatic intensity in the score sound insincere and are palpably artificial. The composer never was stirred deeply, and consequently he fails to stir his hearers. The Napoleon theme is bombastic, even ridiculous."

RIGINALITY in the playwright manifests itself not through the avoidance of old themes, not in the elimination of the trite, the familiar and the stock subjects, but in his mode of combining his materials. This, indeed, is the only sort of genuine originality that exists in any art, from architecture to miniature painting. It is in his manner of using his materialhis synthesis that the original genius reveals himself, even when his materials are so familiar as bricks and straw.

This point, which was made in ancient Greece, does not impress the dramatic critic of to-day at all, as a patron of the stage laments in the New York Sun. The dramatic critics of the metropolis are anxious to show that they know everything. Nothing pleases them so much as to be able to point out, in their notices of a new piece, that such and such a situation was used twenty times in the eighteenth century or that a certain climax is but a repetition from something in Sardou. The truth is, we are reminded, that since the stage must hold the mirror up to nature and since life is in its essence to-day what it was ten thousand years ago, the great playwright is forever using the old materials. The man not in love with his wife, the woman with a guilty secret, the innocence that never suspects, the marriage concealed -these are excellent material if the playwright can synthesize them in some strikingly fresh form that we may derive a new impression from what seems as ancient as Egypt. For originality, to repeat, consists purely and simply in one's new mode of combining the old materials. How irrelevant, then, is the assurance of the average dramatic

critic that this particular play suggests pacitated physically. that old playwright!

The sort of dramatic criticism of which complaint is thus made flourishes in New York just now, as anyone may see who follows the notices of the new plays. Here is a typical instance of the sophisticated kind of criticism which complains of the materials used by the playwright while neglecting the mode in which they are used. The piece is "Sinners," by Owen Davis, presented by William A. Brady at the Playhouse:

"Owen Davis's melodrama, 'Sinners,' with its repentant prodigals, its contrasts between the vices of the city and the humble virtues of country life-but without the flock of sheep and the hay wagon -was a distinct reminder last night of that old and remarkably successful rural melodrama. Its colors were put on with the same heavy brush and in the same

At all events, this was the theme of the opening dissertation, but, as nothing came of it, present consideration of it is unnecessary. Victor Valdecini, a marvelous pianist and thoroughly unprincipled and selfish profligate, has, at the summit of his career, found the

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thus far, has had to be content with sisterly confidence and affection. He wants a large sum of money to execute a commission, which will make his fame and fortune, and she supplies it. After this he discovers that his model, Cara Marx, is the mother of a child by Valdeciniwho has treated her with abominable deceit and cruelty-and is determined to sue him for its maintenance. Knowing that the exposure would wreck Christine Valdecini's happiness, he chivalrously buys the woman off with the money with which Christine had provided him, thereby deliberately sacrificing all his own hopes of advancement. This is all the harder because he has declared his passion to Christine, and virtually won her agreement to a later elopement. Unluckily-the triteness of this device is obvious he leaves the check he has written the latter, of course, jumps to the confor Cara where Christine can find it, and clusion that he has deceived her, and used her money to get rid of an old mistress. Thereupon, when he-lest the play. should end too soon-absolutely refuses to explain matters, she peremptorily dismisses him. This crisis is turned, some

reward of his persistent immorality in a stroke of paralysis. Henceforth he must be crippled hopelessly, largely dependent upon the rich and angelic wife, who hitherto has adored him, altho miserable for the lack of the motherhood that has been denied her. Here, of course, is a potential tragedy. But the lady has at hand a ready lover in the shape of a gifted young sculptor, James Grebble, who worships her devoutly, but,

what ingeniously, through the agency of Cara, and Grebble is promptly restored to his position of acknowledged lover. But now Christine, fully enlightened concerning Valdecini's selfishness, heartlessness, and perfidy, takes the high moral ground that her marriage vows are doubly binding now that her husband is more than ever in need of her tender and watchful care, and she bids her lover wait until

she is free. If the curtain had fallen here, the piece would have closed upon a high and effective note. But at this juncture Valdecini experiences a sudden change of heart, and, perceiving himself to be superfluous, commits suicide, and the lovers are united.

"This is the barest skeleton of a plot which is filled with minor complications of a familiar kind upon which it is not necessary to dwell. The theatricality of the whole thing-with its extravagances, suppressions, coincidences, and arbitrary devices-is glaring."

A new play by Alfred Sutro provokes an unusual outburst of the type of dramatic criticism which analyzes the materials and totally neglects the skill with which the materials are put together. "The Clever Ones" is the title of the piece in question, which was presented in New York for the first time the other day. Here is how Hector Turnbull writes of it in the New York Tribune:

"The comedy aims to be a satire on the snobbery of the British middle and lower classes. It aims, too, we imagine, to outShaw Shaw on his own familiar field. We are probably mistaken in this, however, as there are such slight grounds for so presumptuous a suggestion. At any rate it begins with a young son of a wealthy brewer who falls in love with the clever daughter of a clever mother. They are clever in the superficial sense, having but learned to spout lines from the various philosophers of note and to make their home hideous with the 'new idea' in decoration. The young man, to win his suit, pretends to be an anarchist and a freethinker, and adds all the frills that might aid him in capturing the silly girl. When he has won the girl he takes her father, a hard, practical business man, into his confidence and the two contrive to give the girl a real taste of what poverty and the thoughtful life is in actual practice. During the course of this adventure in the slums the young man meets again a girl he has thrown over for the 'clever' one, and, to make Mr. Sutro's tale a bit shorter, it all ends happily, with the youth and his real love together again, and the 'clever' one going back to her

former flame.

"Such material in such a set of episodes is rather played out. The wealthy young man in disguise and the college girl who is a silly fool just because she has been in college, may have been all right years ago or may do now for a story in a second-rate magazine, but a playwright of Alfred Sutro's caliber should be above using them without taking the trouble to furbish them a trifle."

Another critic "who has seen it all before" wrote about "The Shadow" in the New York Evening Sun. Ethel Barrymore enacts the heroine in this work by Dario Niccodemi, written. originally for Rejane and now at the Empire Theater. Our critic finds the story in outline "simple and conventional," adding:

"The central figure is the wife of a

celebrated artist. For six years she has been a helpless invalid. During all that time he has been sympathetic and attentive, but she has by force of circumstances gone out of his life, and suffered in consequence all the mental anguish attendant on doubt. The husband forms a liaison with his wife's most intimate friend, who becomes the mother of his child.

"The invalid is miraculously cured. For devious and none too definite reasons the cure is kept secret from the husband. But one day she surprises him in his studio, where he has been living with the other woman, and learns the truth.

"It is impossible to win him away from his illicit love. So the author, from a number of likelier probabilities, chooses for his last act what seems to be the current obsession of the stage-the dénouement of renunciation. The wife yields to the inevitable and establishes the future relationship of the three in a prospectus that, as nearly as we can remember, reads something like this:

"You are entering,' she says to her husband, 'upon a broad highway of happiness. I have always been a shadow upon your life. But from now on let me become a restful shadow, where, when the sun of happiness becomes too strong you can come and find. comfort.''

Edward Knoblauch's new play, called "Marie-Odile," that was presented by David Belasco at the Belasco Theater in New York lately, inspires in the critic of the New York Press very much the type of comment illustrated here all along. He can detect nothing original in a piece that has elements reminiscent of other pieces: .

"The story of Marie-Odile concerns a foundling girl who is brought up by the nuns of a convent in Alsace, and when she grows up is 'permitted to become a novice,' as the text of the play states, tho this is not the church's view of such a matter. It is in the year 1870, and the Prussian troops are invading the peaceful valley of Alsace, in which the convent is situated.

"In terror of what may be fall the nuns their father confessor comes to them with news of the advancing Prussians, and bids them desert the convent and follow him to Switzerland, a thing that is accomplished without the company of MarieOdile, who, in a momentary fit of rebellion against the stern rule of the Mother Superior, has hidden in the loft above the refectory.

"Marie-Odile is thus left alone with old Peter, the gardener, the only man other than Father Fisher that she has ever seen,

"THE CINDERELLA OF THE CONVENT"

Marie-Odile, as enacted by Frances Starr in the Knoblauch play at the Belasco Theater in New York, achieves a totally original effect.

novice alone. An evil scene, evilly done and leaving a queasy sense of physical uneasiness and distaste behind it.

"Marie-Odile knows nothing of men, and she makes love to this shy young soldier like a pagan. She bids him stay longer than the half hour allotted for his purpose by Sergeant Beck to Corporal Meissner-and the soldier stays. After an interval of a year we see Marie-Odile, still living alone in the convent, with only old Peter to help her keep the place and possessed of the physical signs of what she calls 'a miracle.' This is a young baby in a basket for a crib.

"The Sisters return and in her outraged sense of virtue the Mother Superior is about to drive Marie-Odile from the convent, when something happens with a halo around the young mother's head that would seem to indicate a change of heart on the part of the Mother Superior, and a stay of sentence for Marie-Odile. But of this we are not at all sure.

"This piece is a purely theatrical device with two elements in it that are likely to offend Catholics and Germans. Its probability or improbability are quite beyond the question in such a play, for what was poetically beautiful in 'Sister Beatrice' and in the opera 'Le Jongleur de Notre Dame' here becomes nothing more profound or mystic than a theatrical trick to create a situation that in the end is left to the imagination."

N

OT without misgiving did the warmest admirers of both Thomas Hardy and Granville Barker hear of a projected presentation at the Kingsway Theater in London of a version of the "Dynasts," says William Archer, in the New York Nation. It seemed too gigantic a task even for Mr. Barker's energy and scenic skill. As one reads again the Hardy text with its nineteen acts, its 130 scenes and its two or three hundred speaking characters, to say nothing of crowds, parliaments and armies, one was much more impressed by the scenic impossibilities than by the dramatic impossibilities of the great epic in dialog. It was magnificent, but it was not drama. Then, too, there was the supernatural machinery. That hovering chorus of phantom intelligence—the Spirit of the Years, the Spirit of the Pities, the Spirits Sinister and Ironic, the Recording Angels and other fearful wild fowl to whom the poet has assigned the task of turning upon the world the searchlights of his pessimistic philosophy-how were these aerial phantasms to be treated? It might have been possible, no doubt, simply to omit them; but to this Mr. Hardy would hardly have consented. Here is how the problem was resolved by Mr. Barker as explained most lucidly in The Nation:

"He had shown admirable tact and ingenuity in grappling with a problem with regard to which he had no precedents to guide him. Reducing Mr. Hardy's text to perhaps one-tenth of its whole bulk, he had given it a species of unity by selecting those scenes in which England and Englishmen are most directly concerned; and for the presentation of these episodes he had invented a new scenic framework and, as it were, a new organ of epic dramatic expression. Never did producer more truly collaborate with his author than Mr. Barker and Mr. Hardy; yet he has done it without thrusting his own inventions into the foreground, after the fashion of those actor-managers who in

PLAYABLE

flict their collaboration upon the defenceless Shakespeare.

"When we entered the theater, we were scenium of plain gray, filled in with gray confronted by a specially constructed procurtains. Against each of the raking panels of the proscenium was placed an elevated throne; while from the narrow apron in front of the curtains converging flights of steps led down to a stone seat with a sort of stone lectern before it. The architectural proportions of the whole structure were very pleasing. Presently the curtains opened in the middle and ladies (Miss Esmé Beringer and Miss through them came two stately muse-like Carrie Haase), who proceeded to occupy the two thrones, and Mr. Henry Ainley, in Georgian attire, with a gray academic gown, who stepped down and seated himself at the lectern, facing the audience. To these three personages, the dual chorus and the single reader, were assigned the lyrical, philosophical and narrative portions of the production. The two Muses, as they naturally would, spoke in verse, while the Reader, speaking for the most part in prose, supplied what may be called the connective tissue for the episodes, or the thread on which they were strung. He read, in short, Mr. Hardy's elaborate and characteristic stage-directions."

These lyrical comments and spoken stage directions are established institutions of the Japanese stage, we are reminded by Mr. Archer; but in their application to 'The Dynasts' there resulted an effect of which the critic of the London Spectator makes much. Without going deeply into the interesting question of the psychology of acting, he says that an actor who is playing the part of a person actually going through a violent experience on the stage rightly imitates closely a person going through such an experience. When, however, an actor is merely describing the experience as having happened at some other time, whether to himself or to some one else, he ought to be doing or behavThis is often ing quite differently. overlooked. Thus the excellent reader, in describing a cavalry charge, actually

"Before the poetic drama can be properly performed on our stage, whether it be Shakespeare's or any new poet's, actors must learn to say poetry as a good reader reads it in a small room and yet so that it may be heard all over the theater. We can se: from Hamlet's ad

vice to the players how much Shakespeare suffered from the actors of his time.

He warns them against all those tricks by which the modern actor obscures the sense of verse. They are to speak their speech trippingly to the tongue, and not to mouth it; and, most significant of all, they are, in the very whirlwind of passion, to acquire a temperance that will give it smoothness. This smoothness is essential to poetry if its music is not to be torn to tatters. And wherever there is music in the verse, or in the prose if it be prose, the actor should subdue himself to the execution of that, as if he were playing on the fiddle. But our actors are taught always to act, and if they cannot suit the action to the word, to act in spite of it. Act they must, with gesture and voice; and the poetry must suit itself to their acting as best it can.

"Now Mr. Ainley and the chorus, and the other actors in 'The Dynasts,' were not

worse but much better than most actors in this matter; but for all that one could see that they had been taught the wrong way of saying poetry or any kind of beautiful speech. It may be that the right way is far more difficult, and that it would seem

tame to a modern audience until they had learned to listen to the words as if they were music. But until actors have learnt to say, and the audience to hear, words as if they were music, it will be impossible for poetic drama to be properly presented on the English stage.”

O

NLY within recent years has systematic observation been made of the results consequent upon the division into two sexes of the conspicuous forms of plant life. They have eyes which see, to follow the elucidation of Royal Dixon, a student of what he deems the human side of plants, they have mouths with which they eat and stomachs to digest their food in. The stomachs of plants are in the form of leaves; but they subserve the purpose. Plants have lungs with which they breathe and they actually drink water. They are organisms, and because they are organisms they perform the functions of such things. They actually mate.

Be

Plants have not always had the same manner of eating, drinking and sleeping, nor have they always had the mating customs prevailing among them at present. Plant customs and habits change as do the habits of other organisms. Hence their mating habits have been modified through the ages. fore the mating of any pair of plants occurs, there is at this stage in the evolution of many among them a brief period of what must be called courtship. The happy and gallant wooer adorns himself gorgeously with brilliant flowers, each having powdered faces, calling to his love on every breeze. He must charm or there will be no response. This, of course, refers to matings among the more developed plants.

"When we speak of flowers we rarely stop to consider just what the term means! It means not only the pistil, which contains the undeveloped seeds or ovules; the stamens with their pollen grains; but the petals, or, taken together, the corolla; and lastly the calyx-all these different parts combine to form the flower. The brilliantly colored petals are really used as advertizements. The reds, yellows, oranges, greens, purples and whites are flags that signal to the bees and butterflies to come and feast on the honey—and thus to fill their fuzzy backs with the pollen grains which will readily cling to the sticky pistil of the next flower they visit.

"One of the most brilliant displays of color is that of the flame azalea. It flaunts its gaudy blossoms over the moun

tain-sides, beckoning to the pollen-bearers

to come and taste of its honey. Its flamecolored flowers are produced in great profusion, and, massed together, their blazing splendor gives the impression of the woods on fire. The azalea, because of

its gay blossoms, is becoming very popular as a cultivated shrub.

"Some plants do not care to have their pollen distributed, but fertilize their own flowers by dropping the pollen grains upon their own pistils. But in all such cases their children are degenerates, and only plants which are very low and unsuccessful in life use this means of fertilization. While in a very large percentage of flowering plants the male and female elements both are present in the same flower, if good healthy offspring are to be produced it is necessary for pollen to be brought from another plant, or another flower of the same plant."

It was long ago proved that close interbreeding produces degenerates in the plant kingdom. There are very few instances among high-class plants where perfect seeds have been produced without the ovules having been fertilized in the regular way; that is, by a transference of the pollen from the male to the female flower. Among such plants as begonias, cucumbers, gourds, squashes and the like there are female. If for any reason the proper many flowers that are distinctly male or insects do not exist in the territory where such flowers are to be raised, the flowers may be fertilized by carrying pollen dust from the male to the female by means of a feather or brush. Plants have various devices for a dainty securing a cross-fertilization of their flowers. Some use the wind as an butterflies, the moths, the snails or agent, others depend upon the bees, the even the birds. Bird pollination is a common thing in Brazil, where the abutilon is fertilized by the humming bird. Flowers use their beauty, perfume and conspicuousness to attract to themselves insects that will distribute their pollen.

"And in considering this plant courtship and marriage there is one point which needs especial emphasis-a point which must necessarily be reiterated time and again in the consideration of the human side of plants. It is the existence of some guiding force, too impulsive to be mechanical, too versatile and efficient to be instinctive, which controls the actions and manners of plants in all the stages of their reproductive functions. There is an almost human sagacity in these actions: in the display of brilliant

colors and soft perfumes to attract their lovers; in the cunning which they ov in imprisoning a bee if he should arrive before the pollen grains are ready to be sifted on his back, and of holding him,

sometimes days at a time, until he can go forth laden with the pollen that is to adhere to a pistil and so find its way to the ovary and perform the great miracle that results in seeds; in the many similar tricks which they use to entice and to hold; all working together towards that one great aim of plant life-reproduction.

The

"Perhaps one of the strangest and most interesting methods of securing crossfertilization is that used by certain water plants which have their flower-stalks entirely hidden under the water. Italian eel-grass (Vallisneria spiralis) uses this unique method of fertilization. The female flowers grow on long, spirally twisted stalks, and each flower is enclosed in a small bladder. The male flowers grow in bunches, and each entire bunch

is covered with a thin skin-like sheath.

The female flower has continued to reach up her head until the flowers rest on the tied down below by a short stalk. surface of the water; while the male is

lant wooer deliberately breaks loose from his underwater position, and arises to the top where his lady-love is peacefully floating! The male flower bursts open his sepals and forms a tiny raft, and, by means of this raft, he is enabled to float around until some kind of wind or wave

"Now the miracle happens! The gal

brings him in contact with his love. Some of the pollen from the male adheres to the female flower; she drops to the bottom of the water, and there reveloped."* mains while the seeds are being de

Plants, as this student of them affirms after his careful investigation of the evidence, possess a psychic sense. There are numerous evidences of it in the plant's power to discover the presence of objects necessary to its welfare. A climbing plant, which needs a prop, will creep toward the nearest support. Should this be shifted to a spot several feet from its former position, the vine will, within a few hours, change its course to the new direction. Is it possible that the plant sees the pole? Such a theory may explain the action in this instance, but if the plant grows between two mounds or ridges and behind the ridge stands a wall which will afford good climbing but is invisible from the position of the plant, while behind the other ridge is no form of support, the plant invariably will bend its course

over the ridge which is before the wall. Examples of this may be found wherever climbing or creeping plants

Stokes. *HUMAN SIDE OF PLANTS. By Royal Dixon.