if nothing else has. But atmosphere
is demanded, and that Mme. Farrar did not give us, at least she did not
give it to me. In the beginning the interpretation made on me the effect
of routine,--the sort of performance one can see in any first-rate
European opera house,--and later, when the realistic bits were added,
the distortion offended me, for French opera always demands a certain
elegance of its interpreters; a quality which Mme. Farrar has exposed to
us in two other French roles.

Her Manon is really an adorable creature. I have never seen Mary Garden
in this part, but I have seen many French singers, and to me Mme. Farrar
transcends them all. A very beautiful and moving performance she gives,
quite in keeping with the atmosphere of the opera. Her adieu to the
little table and her farewell to Des Grieux in the desert always start a
lump in my throat.

Her Charlotte (a role, I believe, cordially detested by Mme. Farrar, and
one which she refuses to sing) is to me an even more moving conception.
This sentimental opera of Massenet's has never been appreciated in
America at its true value, although it is one of the most frequently
represented works at the Paris Opera-Comique. When it was first
introduced here by Emma Eames and Jean de Rezske, it found little
favour, and later Mme. Farrar and Edmond Clement were unable to arouse
interest in it (it was in _Werther_, at the New Theatre, that Alma Gluck
made her operatic debut, in the role of Sophie). But Geraldine Farrar as
the hesitating heroine of the tragic and sentimental romance made the
part very real, as real in its way as Henry James's "Portrait of a
Lady," and as moving. The whole third act she carried through in an
amazingly pathetic key, and she always sang _Les Larmes_ as if her heart
were really breaking.

What a charming figure she was in Wolf-Ferrari's pretty operas, _Le
Donne Curiose_ and _Suzannen's Geheimness_! And she sang the lovely
measures with the Mozartean purity which at her best she had learned
from Lilli Lehmann. Her Zerlina and her Cherubino were delightful
impersonations, invested with vast roguery, although in both parts she
was a trifle self-conscious, especially in her assumption of
awkwardness. Her Elisabeth, sung in New York but seldom, though she
has recently appeared in this role with the Chicago Opera Company, was
noble in conception and execution, and her Goosegirl one of the most
fascinating pictures in the operatic gallery of ou