Early in the next year, a brief but graceful “Dance Episode” was staged, “The Water Nymph,” arranged by Mlle. Kyasht, who followed on September 24th with another, entitled “First Love,” in which she was supported by Mons. Alexander Volinin. This was followed on February 11th, 1913, by another fanciful ballet-idyll, “The Reaper’s Dream,” in which Mlle. Lydia Kyasht appeared as the “Spirit of the Wheatsheaf,” seen and pursued in his dream by the reaper (Miss F. Martell); while Miss Phyllis Bedells made a dazzling personage as “Sun-Ray,” flitting in and out the autumn cornfield, which formed the setting for some very pretty dances by the three ladies and the Empire _corps de ballet_. One of the most artistic productions at the Empire in quite recent years was certainly the choral ballet, in three tableaux: “Titania,” which, adapted of course from Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was arranged and produced by Mlle. Lydia Kyasht and by Mr. C. Wilhelm, the latter of whom was, as usual, entirely responsible for the pictorial side of the ballet. It is interesting to note that this was not the first time a Shakespeare play had been so treated. No less a person than the great Dryden had adapted “The Tempest” at a time, shortly before the Great Fire of London, when Sir William Davenant was producing “dramatic operas” at a theatre designed by Wren, the Duke’s Theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which he held under a patent granted in 1662 by Charles II. These, as an earlier historian records, were “all set off with the most expensive decorations of scenes and habits, with the best voices and dancers.” [Illustration: _Dover St. Studios_ Mme. Lydia Kyasht] [Illustration: _Hugh Cecil_ Miss Phyllis Bedells] Then, too, it was but a return to early history to give us vocal-ballet, for all the earliest ballets on the French stage were always described as “opera-ballets,” long declamatory and choral scenes being interspersed with dances. Lulli, Rameau, Mouret, Campra and Monteverde were among the composers of such ballets, many of which, musically at least, seem wonderfully fresh to-day. This, however, is but a digression. “Titania” at the Empire was a very graceful and poetic production, quite fairy-like enough, one feels, to have delighted even Shakespeare himself, with Mlle. Lydia Kyasht as a truly regal-looking Titania, Mr. Leonid Joukoff as a dignified Oberon, Miss Unity More as a nimble Puck (a part later played by Miss Ivy St. Helier), and Miss Phyllis Bedells as an enchanting “first fairy,” Philomel. On Mlle. Kyasht’s departure for America the part of Titania was taken up by Miss Phyllis Bedells, who added yet another to her growing list of artistic successes. The ballet, which was beautifully staged, gave us some enchanting pictures, one of which, the apotheosis of the Fairy Realm seen through a tangled hawthorn brake, lingers hauntingly in one’s memory.