zer. She was not sanguine before
the event. In January, 1911, she said to me: "No, malgre Tito Ricordi,
NO! I don't believe in opera in English, I never have believed in it,
and I don't think I ever shall believe in it. Of course I'm willing to
be convinced. You see, in the first place, I think all music dramas
should be sung in the languages in which they are written; well, that
makes it impossible to sing anything in the current repertoire in
English, doesn't it? The only hope for opera in English, so far as I can
see it, lies in America or England producing a race of composers, and
they haven't it in them. It isn't in the blood. Composition needs Latin
blood, or something akin to it; the Anglo-Saxon or the American can't
write music, great music, at least not yet.... I doubt if any of us
alive to-day will live to hear a great work written to a libretto in our
own language.

"Now I am going to sing Victor Herbert's _Natoma_, in spite of what I
have just told you, because I don't want to have it said that I have
done anything to hinder what is now generally known as 'the cause.' For
the first time a work by a composer who may be regarded as American is
to be given a chance with the best singers, with a great orchestra, and
a great conductor, in the leading opera house in America--perhaps the
leading opera house anywhere. It seems to me that every one who can
should put his shoulder to this kind of wheel and set it moving. I shall
be better pleased than anybody else if _Natoma_ proves a success and
paves the way for the successful production of other American lyric
dramas. Of course _Natoma_ cannot be regarded as 'grand opera.' It is
not music, like _Tristan_, for instance. It is more in the style of the
lighter operas which are given in Paris, but it possesses much melodic
charm and it may please the public. I shall sing it and I shall try to
do it just as well as I have tried to do Salome and Thais and
Melisande."

She kept her word, and out of the hodge-podge of an opera book which
stands unrivalled for its stiltedness of speech, she succeeded in
creating one of her most notable characters. She threw vanity aside in
making up for the role, painting her face and body a dark brown; she
wore two long straight braids of hair, depending on either side from the
part in the middle of her forehead. Her garment was of buckskin, and
moccasins covered her feet. She crept rather than walked. The story, as
might be imagined, wa