if Mary Garden should vouchsafe
us another view of her nervous, unleashed tiger-woman I would be
completely bowled over.

It seems necessary to speak of the portraits she has added to her
gallery since the fall of 1917. Since then she has been seen in
Fevrier's _Gismonda_, Massenet's _Cleopatre_, and Montemezzi's _l'Amore
dei Tre Re_. The first of these is a very bad opera; it is not even one
of Sardou's best plays. The part afforded Miss Garden an opportunity for
the display of pride, dignity, and authority. Her gowns were very
beautiful--I remember particularly the lovely Grecian drapery of the
convent scene, which she has since developed into a first-act costume
for Fiora; she made a handsome figure of the woman, but the thing itself
was pasteboard and will soon be forgotten. The posthumous _Cleopatre_
was nearly as bad, but in the scene in which the queen, disguised as a
boy, visits an Egyptian brothel and makes love to another boy, Mary was
very startling, and the death scene, in which, after burying the asp in
her bosom, she tosses it away with a shudder, sinks to the ground,
then crawls to Antony's side and expires below his couch, one arm waving
futilely in the air in an attempt to touch her lover, was one of her
most touching and finest bits of acting. Her pale face, her green
eyelids combined to create a sinister make-up. But, on the whole, a dull
opera, and not likely to be heard again.

[Illustration: MARY GARDEN AS CLEOPATRE

_from a photograph by Moffett (1919)_]

But Fiora! What a triumph! What a volcano! I have never been able to
find any pleasure in listening to the music of Montemezzi's _l'Amore dei
Tre Re_, although it has a certain pulse, a rhythmic beat, especially in
the second act, which gives it a factitious air of being better than it
really is. The play, however, is interesting, and subtle enough to
furnish material for quibble and discussion not only among critics, but
among interpreters themselves. Miss Bori, who originally sang Fiora in
New York, was a pathetic flower, torn and twisted by the winds of fate,
blown hither and thither without effort or resistance on her part. It
was probably a possible interpretation, and it found admirers. Miss
Muzio, the next local incumbent of the role, fortified with a letter
from Sem Benelli, or at least his spoken wishes, found it convenient to
alter this impersonation in most particulars, but she was not, is not,
very convincing. Her intentions are u