LES SYLPHIDES.—Genee. In what years was she at her height? And how many generations preceded her as exponents of her particular form of the Dance? I dare say “in those days” when the “people wanted” such things they wanted them well done. “People” still want it, but evidently not done well. The background—Belasco!—well, never mind that. The _Chopiniana_ that Rabinoff’s Russians did had at least finesse; this one has terrible ragged edges. Even the solo works, waltzes, and prelude seemed chosen with little taste—the presenting of the thing at all was offensive taste. * * * * * PRINCE IGOR.—The red of the tents not “barbaric,” the paganism of the costumes a trifle faded, and the leaps of the warriors (Bolm, the “chief warrior,” you remember) not convincing. The mob, or “ensemble,” if you must, properly wild and abandoned. The music is the kind that you beat time to with your feet, you know—primitive I think they call it. Well, the “very moderns” failed us again—do you see? * * * * * L’APRÈS MIDI D’UN FAUNE.—Green. Some how I was expecting purple, the hazy opaque purple of a woodland when the sun enters it from one side; and still I think that purple would have fitted the Debussy music and the mood of the faun,—a mood, of course dependent on the music. But it was green, with rather weak spots of red. This scene framed by a Greek border of pale and dark blue and white. In front of this frame, looking into the picture at the languid, piping faun, moved nymphs. They seemed part of the border—a decoration from an urn or from the walls of some temple. The faun leaves his knoll and moves into the decorative sphere of the maidens. Beautiful movement, repressed, conventionalized. A scarf is left by one of the maidens; they have all left the faun. He has nothing but this to remember them by. Returning to his mossy rock he possesses the scarf. No lover more delicately held the body of his love or with more reverence knelt toward her. The curtain lowers here—the faun is left to dream. “Now, look here, my friends,” as _the_ Lecturer would say, stamping across the stage; “away with all this nonsense and hypocrisy, this clatter about ‘indecent,’ ‘revolting,’ ‘vicious,’ ‘offensive,’ ‘decadent,’ and such blabber! Admit that your life, you critics, living for art as you pretend to, is made up of just such things—in fact if you were honest you’d admit your entire life is wholly, first and last, rooted, aye, _dwelling_ on just this episode, and yet you cry aloud unto the heavens ‘indecent,’ ‘revolting,’ ‘offensive’ when it is beautifully simple and much more perfectly presented before you than you’ll ever experience it yourself. And as for the substitution of the scarf, well, the psychology of the incident is perfect and the whole thing is heightened by art, my friends, _art_—and you of course, living as you do amongst the fleshpots and the Market