It is related that Marie Delna was discovered washing dishes at an inn in a small town near Paris. Her benefactors took her to the capital and placed her in the Conservatoire. She always retained a certain peasant obstinacy, and it is said that during the course of her instruction when she was corrected she frequently replied, “Je m’en vais.” Against this phrase argument was unavailing and Mme. Delna, as a result, acquired a habit of having her own way. Her Orphée was (and still is, I should think) one of the notable achievements of our epoch. It must have equalled Pauline Viardot’s performance dramatically, and transcended it vocally. After singing the part several hundred times she naturally acquired certain habits and mannerisms, tricks both of action and of voice. Still, it is said that when she came to the Metropolitan Opera House she offered, at a rehearsal, to defer to Mr. Toscanini’s ideas. He, the rumour goes, gave his approval to her interpretation on this occasion. Not so at the performance. Those who have heard it can never forget the majesty and beauty of this characterization, as noble a piece of stage work as we have seen or heard in our day. At her début in the part in New York Mme. Delna was superb, vocally and dramatically. In the celebrated air, _Che faro senza Euridice_, the singer followed the tradition, doubly established by the example of Mme. Viardot in the great revival of the mid-century, of singing the different stanzas of the air in different _tempi_. In her slowest _adagio_ the conductor became impatient. He beat his stick briskly across his desk and whipped up the orchestra. There was soon a hiatus of two bars between singer and musicians. It was a terrible moment, but the singer won the victory. She _turned her back on the conductor_ and continued to sing in her own time. The organ tones rolled out and presently the audience became aware of a junction between the two great forces. Mr. Toscanini was vanquished, but he never forgave her. During the opera season of 1915-16, opera-goers were treated to a diverting exhibition. Mme. Geraldine Farrar, just returned from a fling at three five-reel cinema dramas, elected to instil a bit of moving picture realism into _Carmen_. Fresh with the memory of her prolonged and brutal scuffle in the factory scene as it was depicted on the screen, Mme. Farrar attempted something like it in the opera, the first act of which was enlivened with sundry blows and kicks. More serious still were her alleged assaults on the tenor (Mr. Caruso) in the third act which, it is said, resulted in his clutching her like a struggling eel, to prevent her interference with his next note. There was even a suggestion of disagreement in the curtain calls which ensued. All these incidents of an enlivening evening were duly and impressively chronicled in the daily press.