plet_ of Meilhac and Halevy will reawaken. But it is only at a
revival of one of our old favourites that we can really bathe in
sentimentality, drink in draughts of joy from the past, allow memory
full away. You whose hair is turning white will be in Row A, Seat No.
1 for the first performance of a revival of _Robin Hood_. You will not
hear Edwin Hoff in his original role; Jessie Bartlett Davis is dead
and, alas, Henry Clay Barnabee is no longer on the boards, but the
newcomers, possibly, are respectable substitutes and the airs and
lines remain. You can walk about in the lobby and say proudly that you
attended the _first_ performance of the opera ever so long ago when
operettas had tune and reason. "Yes sir, there were plots in those
days, and composers, and the singers could _act_. Times have certainly
changed, sir. Come to the corner and have a Manhattan.... There were
no cocktails in those days.... There is no singer like Mrs. Davis
today!"

Well the poor souls who cannot feel tenderly about a past they have
not yet experienced have their recompenses. For one thing I am certain
that the revivals of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to which De
Wolf Hopper devoted his best talents were better, in many respects,
than the original London productions; just as I am equally certain
that the representations of _Aida_ at the Metropolitan Opera House are
way ahead of the original performance of that work given at Cairo
before the Khedive of Egypt.

Then there is the musical revue, a form which we have borrowed from
the French, but which we have vastly improved upon and into which we
have poured some of our most national feeling and expression. The
interpretation of these frivolities is a new art. Gaby Deslys may be
only half a loaf compared to Marie Jansen, but I am sure that Elsie
Janis is more than three-quarters. Frank Tinney and Al Jolson can, in
their humble way, efface memories of Digby Bell and Dan Daly. Adele
Rowland and Marie Dressler have their points (and curves). Irving
Berlin, Louis A. Hirsch, and Jerome Kern are not to be sniffed at.
Neither is P. G. Wodehouse. Harry B. Smith we have always with us: he
is the Sarah Bernhardt of librettists.

Joseph Urban has wrought a revolution in stage settings for this form
of entertainment. Louis Sherwin has offered us convincing evidence to
support his theory that the new staging in America is coming to us by
way of the revue and not through the serious drama. Melville