After Salome had twisted her flanks and exploited the prowess
of her abdominal muscles to perfunctory applause, Doloretes would have
heated the blood, not only of Faust, but of the ladies and gentlemen
in the orchestra stalls, with the clicking of her heels, the clacking
of her castanets, now held high over head, now held low behind her
back, the flashing of her ivory teeth, the shrill screaming, electric
magenta of her smile, the wile of her wriggle, the passion of her
performance. And close beside her the sinuous Mazantinita would flaunt
a garish tambourine and wave a shrieking fan. All inanimate objects,
shawls, mantillas, combs, and cymbals, become inflamed with life, once
they are pressed into the service of these senoritas, languorous and
forbidding, indifferent and sensuous. Against these rude gipsies the
refined grace and Goyaesque elegance of La Argentina stand forth in
high relief, La Argentina, in whose hands the castanets become as
potent an instrument for our pleasure as the violin does in the
fingers of Jascha Heifetz. Bilbao, too, with his thundering heels and
his tauromachian gestures, bewilders our highly magnetized senses.
When, in the dance, he pursues, without catching, the elusive
Doloretes, it would seem that the limit of dynamic effects in the
theatre had been reached.

Here are singers! The limpid and lovely soprano of the comparatively
placid Maria Marco, who introduces figurations into the brilliant
music she sings at every turn. One indecent (there is no other word
for it) chromatic oriental phrase is so strange that none of us can
ever recall it or forget it! And the frantically nervous Luisita
Puchol, whose eyelids spring open like the cover of a Jack-in-the-box,
and whose hands flutter like saucy butterflies, sings suggestive
popular ditties just a shade better than any one else I know of.

But _The Land of Joy_ does not rely on one or two principals for its
effect. The organization as a whole is as full of fire and purpose as
the original Russian Ballet; the costumes themselves, in their
blazing, heated colours, constitute the ingredients of an orgy; the
music, now sentimental (the adaptability of Valverde, who has lived in
Paris, is little short of amazing; there is a vocal waltz in the style
of Arditi that Mme. Patti might have introduced into the lesson scene
of _Il Barbiere_; there is another song in the style of George M.
Cohan--these by way of contrast to the Iberian music), now pul