PETROUCHKA.—Primary things: red, blue, yellow; love, hate, jealousy; people and artists. All told together in a ballet whose dramatic unification finds its remarkable inspiration in the music. No doubt Stravinsky’s most important music for the stage. Pétrouchka, eternal paradox of beauty encased in ugliness. His jealousy of the Moor, who also loves the Ballerine, is the ballet, and the music. Foremost the music! Pétrouchka, in whirling frenzy alone with night and the stars; the Ballerine haunting him with piercing notes blown from a silver horn; his discovery of the Moor with his love; and the mannekins entering into the public square, halting the folk-music of the peasants and squires; Pétrouchka’s death in the snow and the appearance of his spirit. All these episodes are _music_. Here one gets the ingenious use of an orchestra, extraordinary combinations of instruments. Carpenter attempted this, you remember, in his _Perambulator_. Igor Stravinsky has accomplished it. He with Leon Bakst, is the most important figure of the Russian Triumph. They worked together to achieve _Pétrouchka_. * * * * * The agonizing lack of an audience excuses Diaghileff in laying aside a completely perfect matinee program in favor of one that would attract modern children with their innocent parents, but, artistically, there is no justification of this bowing to the “public” and to “morals” in the reasoning that moved them to tone down the color of the slaves in _Schéhérazade_. The contrast was needed: black was in the color plan, especially for Le Negre. This makes us suspicious that the other uneven and faulty spots were caused by just such managerial schemings. Seeing some the second and third times strengthened these suspicions! The journalistically “notorious faun” on its third performance (a matinee) moved less lithely and, that there be no “effrontery of good taste,” posed stupidly, stiffly, while the tense vibrating music panted for _movement_—for entry into life. And _Cleopatre_! Much as it was Americanized by being “less sensuous, etc.,” the second performance descended to mere Grand Opera pageantry, or nearer, to a Grand Opera Gala Performance vaudeville. The actual center of interest, the Queen’s couch, was draped by a still, unamourous—yet Decency and the Parents’ League be praised!—unoffensive lover. In a strange land; so strangely treated! That prophets might be understood in another land their priests distort them that barbarians may comprehend! Editorials _THE ESSENTIAL THING._ THE LITTLE REVIEW is a magazine of Art and Revolution. If you ask me which it believes in most I shall have to say—Art. Because there is no real revolution unless it is born of the same spirit which produces real art.