heads, while they thank their poor, heart-broken
friend for his three stories with ringing cheers.

THE ALPINE KING AND THE MISANTHROPE.

Opera in three acts by LEO BLECH.

Text by RICHARD BATKA.

The young composer, who is already conductor of the orchestra of the
German Opera in Prague made his debut last year in a small one-act
opera, called "That was I"--, the music of which is pretty and shows
remarkable talent. There is however enormous progress to be observed
in "The Alpine King". Blech, although following in Wagner's footsteps,
has a style of his own. His modulations are bold, often daring; his
dissonances are frequent but they are fully compensated for by the most
charming folk-songs. He has the courage to introduce melodies freely,
in this respect he is one among a thousand. In his modern style of
orchestration too he shows {443} himself to be full of resource, while
more especially in those passages, where the spirit-world comes into
play, there is a display of tone-effects of great beauty, which are
perhaps too elaborate for the simple subject, but the Cottage scene,
and the simple Tirolean-songs of the peasants are all the more graceful
by contrast; one of the most charming songs in the Polka-air in f:
"Fair are Roses and Jessamine".

Batka, the writer of the libretto, has taken his subject from Raimund's
beautiful folk-story of the same name. He has done it with skill but
not without some weak passages.

The scene opens in a Tirolean mountain district. Marthe, Rappelkopf's
daughter, and her servant Lieschen, while making a nosegay of wild
flowers, are waiting for Marthe's lover Hans, a poor musician, who
after having been rejected by his sweetheart's father has absented
himself for some time, in order to make himself perfect in his art by
studying under the great masters in Italy. Lieschen is much afraid of
the Alpine King on whose ground they are sitting, and of whom the
legend says, that he turns young girls into old women, if they dare to
look at him. Marthe has more sense, she is sure that the lord of these
grand mountains must be good and just. While the girls are busy wilh
their garlands, Hans comes up the steep path and is joyously greeted by
his fiancee. He has become a man and is full of hope that he will now
be able to satisfy Herr Rappelkopf, but Marthe sadly tells {444} him,
how morbid and misanthropic her father has become, so that she does not
even dare to mention he