engaged upon a dramatic composition called "The
Royal Children." He is regarded in Germany as the one composer who
gives promise of continuing and developing the scheme of the
music-drama as it was propounded by Wagner.

HANSEL AND GRETEL.

"Hansel and Gretel," a fairy opera in three acts, words by Adelheid
Wette, was first produced in Germany in 1894. In January, 1895, it was
performed in London by the Royal Carl Rosa Opera Company, rendered
into English by Constance Bache; and in the fall of the same year it
had its first representation in New York, at Daly's Theatre, with the
following cast:--

PETER, a broom-maker Mr. JACQUES BARS.
GERTRUDE, his wife Miss ALICE GORDON.
THE WITCH Miss LOUISE MEISSLINGER.
HANSEL Miss MARIE ELBA.
GRETEL Miss JEANNE DOUSTE.
SANDMAN, the Sleep Fairy Miss CECILE BRANI.
DEWMAN, the Dawn Fairy Miss EDITH JOHNSTON.

The story is taken from one of Grimm's well-known fairy tales, and the
text was written by the composer's sister, Adelheid Wette. It was Frau
Wette's intention to arrange the story in dramatic form for the
amusement of her children, her brother lending his co-operation by
writing a few little melodies, of a simple nature, to accompany the
performance. When he had read it, however, the story took his fancy,
and its dramatic possibilities so appealed to him that he determined
to give it an operatic setting with full orchestral score, and thus
placed it in the higher sphere of world performance by an art which
not alone reveals the highest type of genial German sentimentality,
but, curiously enough, applied to this simple little story of angels,
witches, and the two babes in the woods the same musical methods which
Wagner has employed in telling the stories of gods and demigods.
Perhaps its highest praise was sounded by Siegfried Wagner, son of
Richard Wagner, who declared that "Hansel and Gretel" was the most
important German opera since "Parsifal," notwithstanding its
childishness and simplicity.

After a beautifully instrumented prelude, which has already become a
favorite concert piece, the curtain rises upon the home of Peter, the
broom-maker. The parents are away seeking for food, and Hansel and
Gretel have been left in the cottage with instructions to knit and
make brooms. There is a charming dialogue between the two children,
beginning with a doleful lament over their povert