in priests' vestures"
and danced a wild rout, as did other mad wretches when a dancer was
worshipped as the Goddess of Reason in the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Caterina's account of the rude familiarity with which she is treated by
the soldiery (I must assume a knowledge of Sardou's play which the
opera follows) is set to a melody of a Russian folk-song cast in the
treatment of which Russian influences may also be felt; but with the
first shouts of the mob attacking the Tuileries in the distance the
characteristic rhythmical motif of the "Ca ira" is heard muttering in
the basses. Again a harmless tune which in its time was perverted to a
horrible use; a lively little contradance which graced many a cotillion
in its early days, but which was roared and howled by the mob as it
carried the beauteous head of the Lamballe through the streets of Paris
on a pike and thrust it almost into the face of Marie Antoinette.

Of such material and a pretty little dance ("La Fricassee") is the
music of the first act, punctuated by cannon shots, made. It is all
rhythmically stirring, it flows spiritedly, energetically along with
the current of the play, never retarding it for a moment, but,
unhappily, never sweetening it with a grain of pretty sentiment or
adorning it with a really graceful contour. There is some graciousness
in the court scene, some archness and humor in the scene in which the
Duchess of Dantzic submits to the adornment of her person, some
dramatically strong declamation in the speeches of Napoleon, some
simulation of passion in the love passages of Lefebvre and of Neipperg;
but as a rule the melodic flood never reaches high tide.

CHAPTER XVII

TWO OPERAS BY WOLF-FERRARI

When the operas of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari came to America (his beautiful
setting of the "Vita Nuova" was already quite widely known at the
time), it was thought singular and somewhat significant that though the
operas had all been composed to Italian texts they should have their
first Italian performances in this country. This was the case with "Le
Donne Curiose," heard at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, on
January 3, 1912; of "Il Segreto di Susanna," which the
Chicago-Philadelphia Opera Company brought to New York after giving it
a hearing in its home cities, in February, 1912; of "I Giojelli della
Madonna" first produced in Berlin in December, 1911, and in Chicago a
few weeks later. A fourth opera, "L'Amore Medico," had its first