As the pantomime was tremendously successful, the Emperor had this show put on at a gala benefit performance in the Marie Theater--and this is how Bakst for the first time appeared on the most famous of all Russian stages. This winter of 1900, then, when for the first time he went upon the stage that, according to Goethe, “means the universe”, decided his future. Who could today imagine what the fate of modern scenerie would be without the contribution of Bakst? And who could conceive of a Bakst remaining a stranger to the theater? It took him ten years to find his place. The three knocks struck home. For the first time the curtain rises over a work of Bakst. Ten years later Paris will crown “Sheherazade”. THE THEBAN GATE Meanwhile Colonel Teliakovsky had succeeded Volkonsky. He owed his appointment as director to the fact that he had been in the Horseguards with Baron (later Count) Freedericksz, minister of the Court. A ludicrous figure he was--this horseman promoted [Illustration: A ROAD IN THE FIELDS (SAVOY). DRAWING] to be stage manager--, without either ideas or prestige and consequently unable to contribute anything of value. But he gave others a free hand--and that is a great deal during a period of fermentation and revival. Thus, soon after his appointment, he authorized an experiment of far-reaching importance. Alexander Theater was preparing to bring out Euripides’ tragedy, “Hippolytus,” the attempt being made to produce it as nearly like the ancient original as possible. The young stage director, Osarovsky, hoped to make a grand <g>coup</g>. The play was translated by Merejkovsky in exceedingly beautiful verse and with an extremely intense modern feeling. Among the Russian intellectuals of that time, Nietzschean ideas were held in great fascination. Now, in this early masterpiece the philosopher had transfigured the whole conception of the spirit of the ancients. Under the marble-like and placid guise of the Greece of Apollo’s time he had revealed the Dionysiac ecstacy, the pathetic distress and the mystic impulse of the masses. What had been considered as the key to their souls, viz., this sovereign and plastic art, was but a sham emancipation. For a quarter of a century the government had tried to curb turbulent youth by means of the classical ferule. Greek was loathed as much as was the royal blue of the gendarme uniform. But the translation by Merejkovsky and the enthusiastic eloquence of Professor Zielinski, scholar and poet, who commented upon it as “the birth of tragedy”, caused great surprise and soon extreme fondness for it. It was necessary, however, in order to bring about this rehabilitation of antiquity, to make use of the best possible medium, namely, its consecration by the stage. The scenery and costumes for “Hippolytus” were ordered from Bakst. After an interval of four years there followed “Oedipus at Colonnæ” and Sophocles’ “Antigone”.