ing, though in an
intermezzo from Tschaikowsky's "Mazeppa," descriptive of the battle of
Poltava, which has been heard here, we met with the strong choral tune
which gives great animation to the most stirring scene in "Boris"--the
acclamation of the Czar by the populace in the first act. Of this
something more presently. There were American representations, however,
of a Russian opera which in its day was more popular than "Boris" has
ever been; but that was so long ago that all memories of it have died,
and even the records are difficult to reach. Some fifty years ago a
Russian company came to these shores and performed Verstoffsky's
"Askold's Tomb," an opera which was republished as late as 1897 and
which within the first twenty-five years of its existence had 400
performances in Moscow and 200 in St. Petersburg. Some venturesome
critics have hailed Verstoffsky as even more distinctively a
predecessor of Moussorgsky than Glinka; but the clamor of those who are
preaching loudly that art must not exist for art's sake, and that the
ugly is justified by the beauty of ugliness, has silenced the voices of
these critical historians.

This may thus far have seemed a long and discursive disquisition on the
significance of the new opera; but the questions to which the
production of "Boris Godounoff" give rise are many and grave,
especially in the present state of our operatic activities. They have a
strong bearing on the problem of nationalism in opera, of which those
in charge of our operatic affairs appear to take a careless view. Aside
from all aesthetic questions, "Boris Godounoff" bears heavily on that
problem. It is a work crude and fragmentary in structure, but it is
tremendously puissant in its preachment of nationalism; and it is
strong there not so much because of its story and the splendid
barbarism of its external integument as because of its nationalism,
which is proclaimed in the use of Russian folk-song. All previous
experiments in this line become insignificant in comparison with it,
and it is questionable if any other body of folk-song offers such an
opportunity to the operatic composer as does the Russian. The hero of
the opera is in dramatic stature (or at least in emotional content) a
Macbeth or a Richard III; his utterances are frequently poignant and
heart searching in the extreme; his dramatic portrayal by M. Chaliapine
in Europe and Mr. Didur in America is so gripping as to call up
memories of some of t