But the Stuttgart Elektra performance will live long in my memory, but not because of the lady who assumed the title role, Idenka Fassbender, of Munich. (She is not to be compared with the epileptic Mazarin for a moment. She is not Elektra vocally or histrionically.) The artiste of the evening was Anna von Mildenburg (Vienna), the wife of Herman Bahr, novelist and playwright, best known to America as the author of The Concert, one of David Belasco's productions. The Mildenburg is a giantess, with a voice like an organ. She is also an uneven singer, being hugely temperamental. The night in question she was keyed up to the occasion, and for the first time I realised the impressiveness of the part of Klytemnestra, its horrid tragic force, its abnormal intensity, its absolute revelation of the abomination of desolation. Mildenburg played it as a mixture of Lady Macbeth and Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. And when she sang fortissimo all the Strauss horses and all the Strauss men were as supine, tonally speaking, as Humpty Dumpty. Her voice is of a sultry tonal splendour. The two new opera-houses--also theatres--are set in a park, as should be art and opera houses. Facing the lake is the larger, a building of noble appearance, with a capacity for 1,400 persons seated. The smaller building only holds 800, but it looks as big as the old New York Sub-Treasury, and is twice as severe. Max Reinhardt calls the Hof-Oper the most beautiful in Europe. He is not exaggerating. A round 7,000,000 marks (about $1,750,000) was the cost of the buildings. His Majesty Wilhelm II, a liberal and enlightened monarch, dipped heavily into his private bank account. Stuttgart, according to the intendant, Graf zu Putlitz, must become the leading operatic and art city in Germany. The buildings are there, but not yet the singers. Dresden boasts its opera, and Berlin has better singers. Nevertheless, the pretty city, surrounded by villa-crowned hills, is to be congratulated on such classic temples of music and drama. IV Standing at the window of my hotel in Stuttgart, I watched a crowd before the Central railway station. Evidently something important was about to take place. What! Only the day previous all Stuttgart had strained its neck staring at a big Zeppelin air-ship. It was the week of the Gordon Bennett balloon race and every hotel, every lodging-house was full. It was also the Richard Strauss festival week, with the formal inauguration of the two magnificent opera-houses in the Schlossgarten. So it was not difficult to guess that an important visitor was due at the station. Hence the excitement, which increased when the King of Wuertemberg dashed up in an open carriage, the royal livery and all the rest making a brave picture for his loyal subjects.