"Zanetto" was produced along with "Cavalleria rusticana" at the Metropolitan Opera House on October 8, 1902, and "Iris" on October 16. Signor Mascagni conducted and the parts were distributed as follows among the singers of the company: Iris, Marie Farneti; Osaka, Pietro Schiavazzi; Kyoto, Virgilio Bollati; Il Cieco, Francesco Navarrini; Una Guecha, Dora de Filippe; Un Mercianola, Pasquale Blasio; Un Cencianola, Bernardino Landino. The opera was not heard of again until the season of 1907-1908, when, just before the end of the administration of Heinrich Conried, it was incorporated into the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera House apparently for the purpose of giving Mme. Emma Eames an opportunity to vie with Miss Geraldine Farrar in Japanese opera. CHAPTER XI "IRIS" "Light is the language of the eternal ones--hear it!" proclaims the librettist of "Iris" in that portion of his book which is neither said nor sung nor played. And it is the sun that sings with divers voices after the curtain has risen on a nocturnal scene, and the orchestra has sought to depict the departure of the night, the break of day, the revivification of the flowers and the sunrise. As Byron sang of him, so Phoebus Apollo celebrates himself as "the god of life and poetry and light," but does not stop there. He is also Infinite Beauty, Cause, Reason, Poetry, and Love. The music begins with an all but inaudible descending passage in the basses, answered by sweet concordant harmonies. A calm song tells of the first streaks of light; woodwind and harp add their voices; a mellifluous hymn chants the stirring flowers, and leads into a rhythmically, more incisive, but still sustained, orchestral song, which bears upon its surface the choral proclamation of the sun: "I am! I am life! I am Beauty infinite!" The flux and reflux of the instrumental surge grows in intensity, the music begins to glow with color and pulsate with eager life, and reaches a mighty sonority, gorged with the crash of a multitude of tamtams, cymbals, drums, and bells, at the climacteric reiteration of "Calore! Luce! Amor!" The piece is thrillingly effective, but as little operatic as the tintinnabulatory chant of the cherubim in the prologue of Boito's "Mefistofele."