by the weakness of the music or by her inability to sing a good
deal of it. Quite the contrary. I am sure she sings the part with more
steadiness of tone than Milka Ternina ever commanded for Tosca, and her
performance is equally unforgettable.

After the production of _Louise_, Miss Garden's name became almost
legendary in Paris, and many are the histories of her subsequent career
there. Parisians and foreign visitors alike flocked to the Opera-Comique
to see her in the series of delightful roles which she assumed--Orlanda,
Manon, Chrysis, Violetta ... and Melisande. It was during the summer of
1907 that I first heard her there in two of the parts most closely
identified with her name, Chrysis and Melisande.

Camille Erlanger's _Aphrodite_, considered as a work of art, is fairly
meretricious. As a theatrical entertainment it offers many elements of
enjoyment. Based on the very popular novel of Pierre Louys--at one time
forbidden circulation in America by Anthony Comstock--it winds its
pernicious way through a tale of prostitution, murder, theft, sexual
inversion, drunkenness, sacrilege, and crucifixion, and concludes, quite
simply, in a cemetery. The music is appallingly banal, and has never
succeeded in doing anything else but annoy me when I have thought of it
at all. It never assists in creating an atmosphere; it bears no relation
to stage picture, characters, or situation. Both gesture and colour are
more important factors in the consideration of the pleasurable elements
of this piece than the weak trickle of its sickly melodic flow.

[Illustration: MARY GARDEN AS CHRYSIS (1906)]

For the most part, at a performance, one does not listen to the music.
Nevertheless, _Aphrodite_ calls one again and again. Its success in
Paris was simply phenomenal, and the opera is still in the repertoire of
the Opera-Comique. This success was due in a measure to the undoubted
"punch" of the story, in a measure to the orgy which M. Carre had
contrived to embellish the third act, culminating in the really
imaginative dancing of the beautiful Regina Badet and the horrible scene
of the crucifixion of the negro slave; but, more than anything else, it
was due to the rarely compelling performance of Mary Garden as the
courtesan who consented to exchange her body for the privilege of seeing
her lover commit theft, sacrilege, and murder. In her bold entrance,
flaunting her long lemon scarf, wound round her body like a Nautch
girl's saeri,