Adolphe Appia wrote a book called “Die Musik und die Inscenierung,” which was published in German in 1899. (An earlier work, “La mise-en-scène du drame Wagnerien,” appeared in Paris in 1893.) Since then his career has been strangely obscure for one whose effect on artists working at stage decoration has been greater than that of any other single man. In the second edition of his book, “On the Art of the Theatre,” Gordon Craig, in a footnote, speaks thus of Appia: “Appia, _the foremost stage decorator of Europe_ (the italics are mine) is not dead. I was told that he was no more with us, so, in the first edition of this book, I included him among the shades. I first saw three examples of his work in 1908, and I wrote a friend asking, ‘Where is Appia and how can we meet?’ My friend replied, ‘Poor Appia died some years ago.’ This winter (1912) I saw some of Appia’s designs in a portfolio belonging to Prince Wolkonsky. They were divine; and I was told that the designer was still living.” Loomis Taylor, who, during the season of 1914-15, staged the Wagner operas at the Metropolitan Opera House (and it was not his fault that the staging was not improved; there is no stage director now working who has more belief in and knowledge of the artists of the theatre than Loomis Taylor) has written me, in response to a query, the following regarding Appia: “Adolphe Appia, I think, is a French-Swiss; he is a young man. The title of the book which made him famous, in its German translation, is ‘Die Musik und die Inscenierung.’ It was translated from the French by Princess Cantacuzène.... Five years ago I was told by Mrs. Houston Stewart Chamberlain that Appia was slowly but surely starving to death in some picturesque surroundings in Switzerland. I then tried to get various people in Germany interested in him, also proposing him to Hagemann as scenic artist for Mannheim. Two years later, before his starving process had reached its conclusion, I heard of him as collaborator with Jaques-Dalcroze at his temple of rhythm on the banks of the Elbe, outside of Dresden, where, I think, up to the outbreak of the war, Appia was doing very good work, but what has become of him since I do not know. “His book is very valuable; his suggestions go beyond the possibilities of the average Hof theatre, while in Bayreuth they have a similar effect to a drop of water upon a stone, sun-burned by the rays of Cosima’s traditions. By being one of the first--if not _the_ first--to put in writing the inconsistency of using painted perspective scenery and painted shadows with human beings on the stage, Appia became the fighter for plastic scenery. His sketch of the _Walküren_ rock is the most beautiful scenic conception of Act III, _Die Walküre_, I know of or could imagine. To my knowledge no theatre has ever produced anything in conformity with Appia’s sketches.”