ance, January
31. She also told me that without any special effort on her part she had
assimilated the music of the other two important feminine roles in the
opera, Chrysothemis and Klytaemnestra, and was quite prepared to sing
them. Mme. Mazarin's vocal organ, it must be admitted, was not of a very
pleasant quality at all times, although she employed it with variety and
usually with taste. There was a good deal of subtle charm in her middle
voice, but her upper voice was shrill and sometimes, when emitted
forcefully, became in effect a shriek. Faulty intonation often played
havoc with her musical interpretation, but do we not read that the great
Mme. Pasta seldom sang an opera through without many similar slips from
the pitch? _Aida_, of course, displayed the worst side of her talents.
Her Carmen, it seemed to me, was in some ways a very remarkable
performance; she appeared, in this role, to be possessed by a certain
_diablerie_, a power of evil, which distinguished her from other
Carmens, but this characterization created little comment or interest in
New York. In _Louise_, especially in the third act, she betrayed an
enmity for the pitch, but in the last act she was magnificent as an
actress. In Santuzza she exploited her capacity for unreined intensity
of expression. I have never seen her as Salome (in Richard Strauss's
opera; her Massenetic Salome was disclosed to us in New York), but I
have a photograph of her in the role which might serve as an
illustration for the "Mephistophela" of Catulle Mendes. I can imagine no
more sinister and depraved an expression, combined with such potent
sexual attraction. It is a remarkable photograph, evoking as it does a
succession of lustful ladies, and it is quite unpublishable. If she
carried these qualities into her performance of the work, and there is
every reason to believe that she did, the evenings on which she sang
Salome must have been very terrible for her auditors, hours in which the
Aristotle theory of Katharsis must have been amply proven.

_Elektra_ was well advertised in New York. Oscar Hammerstein is as able
a showman as the late P. T. Barnum, and he has devoted his talents to
higher aims. Without his co-operation, I think it is likely that America
would now be a trifle above Australia in its operatic experience. It is
from Oscar Hammerstein that New York learned that all the great singers
of the world were not singing at the Metropolitan Opera House, a matter
whi