g to let them free, if that proves
to be true, the Marquis is conducted before the {199} Prince, and the
latter discovers that he is a messenger to the King of France, and that
his letter is to show how the French army might attack the Prussians
unawares. By this discovery the Germans are saved, for Dessau has time
to send an officer to Saxony with orders to occupy Dresden before the
arrival of the enemy.

Of course, the students are set free, and each of them obtains an
office and the hand of his maiden besides. The luckless Ruepelmei is
also liberated, being too much of a fool, to deserve even the Prince's
scorn, who further decrees that the foolish town may keep their
Burgomaster, as best suited to their narrow-mindedness.

MARGA.

Opera in one act by GEORG PITTRICH.

Text by ARNO SPIESS.

The first performance of this highly interesting little opera took
place in Dresden in February 1894 and awakened the interest of every
music lover in the hitherto quite unknown composer. Scenery and Music
are of the colouring now common to modern composers, for whom
unfortunately Mascagni is still the God, at whose shrine they worship.

The scene is laid in a Bulgarian village at the foot of the
Schipka-Pass. Marga the heroine, a Roumanian peasant-girl has had a
sister Petrissa, who, suffering cruel wrong at the hands of Vasil
Kiselow, has cursed her seducer and sought death {200} in the waves.
Marga, who had vowed to avenge her sister, is wandering through the
world in vain search of Vasil. When the curtain opens she has just
reached the village, where Vasil occupies the most auspicious position
of Judge. Thoroughly exhausted she sinks down at the foot of a cross
and falls asleep.

Vasil's son Manal, finding her thus, detects a wonderful likeness
between the sleeping beauty and a picture, which he had found some time
ago in the miraculous Sabor Cave, and which for him is the ideal of
love and beauty.--This picture, a likeness of Petrissa had been hung
there by Vasil in order to exorcise the curse of the unhappy virgin,
but Manal has no knowledge of his father's misdeed.

When Marga awakes, the young people of course fall in love with each
other, and Marga discovers too late, that Manal is the son of her
sister's destroyer. Hesitating between love and her vow of vengeance
she wildly reproaches Vasil who falls at her feet in deep contrition
beseeching her forgiveness, which she grants at last.--Full of
pen